GOLDMAN, ELIEZER

GOLDMAN, ELIEZER (1918–2002), Israeli philosopher. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Goldman pursued his undergraduate education at Yeshiva University and was a student of Rabbi M. *Soloveitchik and his son Rabbi J.B. *Soloveitchik, with whom he studied both Talmud and philosophy. His wide-ranging interests included halakhah, philosophy, Jewish thought, mathematics, physics, literature, economics, and music. His grounding in Talmud would serve him, in later life, for his interest in philosophy of halakhah. In the late 1930s Goldman immigrated to what was then Palestine and became a member of kibbutz Sedeh Eliyahu in the Bet Shean Valley. In his own words, his aliyah resulted less from Zionism in the political sense than from his search to fulfill Jewish religious socialism and establish a socialist Jewish society based on traditional Jewish sources. Only later in life was he able to complete his graduate studies at Bar-Ilan University, where he taught for many years and became professor of philosophy. Many of his writings are only now being prepared for posthumous publication in three volumes: the first volume deals with his research into classical Jewish thought; the second on Rav Kook; and the third on social, economic, and cultural thought. Goldman was, however, no ivory tower academic. Many of his writings relate to the social, economic, and cultural life of the religious kibbutz.

Goldman's thought is characterized by a continual dialogue with his teacher J.B. Soloveitchik, and with his friend Yeshayahu *Leibowitz; he agreed with them regarding the centrality of the halakhah to understanding the Jewish world of life (lebenswelt). Together with Soloveitchik and Leibowitz, Goldman contributed to a dramatic shift in contemporary Jewish thought, away from theological-metaphysical theory to halakhic practice. Unlike the other two, however, who employed general philosophy to analyze the halakhah, and who wrote about the halakhah from a philosophical point of view, Goldman sought to overcome the problem of imposing a foreign perspective onto the Jewish tradition itself, preferring what may be called a phenomenological methodology, based on precise examination of the sources themselves. His philosophic work was an attempt to describe carefully and critically the Jewish tradition as it reveals itself, and not as it can be imagined from an external theoretical perspective. Goldman was thus the founder of a new field, philosophy of the halakhah, in which philosophy is used to analyze the halakhah itself. Goldman's collected essays, Expositions and Inquiries: Jewish Thought in Past and Present (1996), was edited by Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman.

Goldman was both an academic scholar and a constructive thinker, who (together with Soloveitchik and Leibowitz) had a seminal impact on Orthodox thought's response to modernity. His research interests focused especially on Saadiah Gaon and Maimonides, but he went beyond neutral research in also seeking existential relevance in their thought. For example, in his view, Maimonides' philosophic positions did not outlive their time, but his method is still largely useful in working out the relationship between philosophy and science, and the sources of religion. In contrast with Soloveitchik and Leibowitz, for whom there is always a fundamental tension between Jewish sources and the external world, Goldman's thought is shaped by the Maimonidean harmony of the Torah and philosophy, and rejects the distinction between "internal" and "external"; each person, including the religious person, reflects his or her socio-cultural environment in his or her understanding of tradition.

Goldman also distanced himself from Soloveitchik's view, especially in his later writings, concerning the feeling of alienation of the individual from nature and society, a feeling of alienation Goldman did not share. In contrast with both Soloveitchik and Leibowitz, Goldman's thought emphasized the multi-cultural and multi-contextual situation of human life. A person does not establish a religious world or halakhic commitment autonomously, independently of the other contexts in which he or she lives.

A consistent theme in Goldman's thought over the years was the problem of the relationship between the Torah and the conditions of life. For Goldman, this is not an ideological question, but an existential one: what do we expect of the halakhah, and how can we interpret it so that it accords real conditions? How does the halakhah actually function, and how can it harmonize its norms with external realities? Goldman's approach thus sharply contrasts with that of Leibowitz, for whom the halakhah is a closed system, which functions autonomously and independently of external conditions, focusing exclusively on the service of God. Leibowitz's approach leads to a split personality in the believer: he or she can either be a believer serving God, or a person committed to political, social, and moral values and conceptions. In the framework of Leibowitz's thought, the believer can never unite these two separate worlds. Goldman, by contrast, proposed a more complex model based on his analysis of the halakhah itself. In 1958 he proposed a new category, "meta-halakhic norms." These norms are not behavioral, but are principles for interpreting and implementing the halakhah itself. The existence of these meta-halakhic norms also undermines the prevalent tendency to describe the halakhah in closed, formal categories of jurisprudence, without any reference to external considerations. Such tendencies, Goldman argued, are contradicted by great halakhic decisors over the ages, who responded to real, practical needs, referring to such concepts as "what most of the community cannot sustain" in making their decisions. Goldman maintained that the contemporary tendency in ḥaredi (ultra-Orthodox) ideology, which reduces a halakhic decision to formal, theoretical truth, results in an abject failure to relate to the needs of the time. Another sociological factor in the problem of the halakhah in our day is the status attached to the yeshivot, which emphasize theoretical study of the halakhah, at the expense of involvement in public life and practical halakhic study. The halakhah thus becomes a theoretical construct rather than a real phenomenon.

The problem, then, is that the halakhah, like any other system of thought, cannot incorporate within itself all the principles required for it to operate, and can only function when we apply meta-halakhic principles. In a series of articles on "Ethics, Religion and Halakhah," Goldman attempted, accordingly, to derive these meta-halakhic principles guiding great halakhic decisiors from the halakhic literature itself, in particular from the vast responsa literature. In his view, these meta-halakhic principles mediate between the halakhah and human existence.

This approach also led Goldman to criticize Leibowitz's reductionism regarding the religious "paradox" underlying the halakhah and the dichotomy Leibowitz posited between the halakhah and existence. On the one hand, the halakhah represents utter heteronomy – the acceptance of the divine will as expressed in the written and oral Torah. On the other hand, since the halakhah no longer relies on prophetic instruction, the moment one attempts to realize and implement the Torah in concrete life situations, one is forced to employ autonomous human reason. The halakhah, which is thus founded on heteronomous authority, operates by means of autonomous human reason. It does not originate in human culture, but is directed towards human culture, which it endows with religious significance, and can only be implemented within a cultural context. In this way, the Torah is a product not only of divine revelation, but also, and not less, of its being transmitted to real people in a concrete social-cultural situation, which in many respects precedes the Torah and guides its interpretation. The Torah thus does not exist independently of the community which lives according to its teachings, but also lives according to values reflecting its concrete human situation. The sources of meta-halakhic principles are, therefore, not necessarily the divine will, i.e., the halakhic system itself, but human value judgments based on social and cultural reality, a reality the halakhah both reflects and is intended to order.

In these ways Goldman advocated what he called "Judaism without illusions," in which religious propositions reflect the believer's own insights and not transcendent being. This, in turn, forms a basis for a pluralistic religious outlook.

bibliography:

A. Sagi, "Religious Language in the Modern World: An Interview with Eliezer Goldman," in: M. Roth (ed.), Religious Zionism in a Renewed Perspective (Heb., 1998); idem, A Challenge: Returning to Tradition, ch. 4 (2003).

[Avi Sagi (2^nd ed.)]