Aronowicz, A (1999) Levinas Judaismo

0
Jewish Education in the Thought of

Emmanuel Levinas*
Annette Aronowicz
In my foray into Emmanuel Levinass thought as it relates to Jewish

education, I have chosen to focus on those of his writings that deal
directly with the subject: the collection of essays Hic et Nunc in
Difficult Freedom and his Talmudic readings. His philosophical works
Totality and Infinity, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, among
others, are indeed crucial if we are to deepen the image of the human
being we wish to form when we educate, but I will not be addressing
them here other than in passing. Their complexity and breadth require
separate study. I maintain, however, that the less philosophical works
are also philosophical. They too raise all sorts of fundamental questions
about the individual and the community, about the intellect and the
emotions, about the particular and the universal. They, too, present us
with a certain image of the human being. It is incontrovertible that these
issues are not developed as fully in the Jewish writings as they are in
the philosophical writings.1 Nonetheless, they possess an advantage
*
0
This article first appeared in Rich, Y. and Rosenak, M. (Eds.) (1999). Abiding
Challenges: Research Perspectives on Jewish Education. Studies in Memory of
Mordechai Bar-Lev, Tel Aviv: Freund Publishing House & Bar Ilan University
Press. It is reprinted here with slight changes in formatting by permission of the
publishers.
This is a distinction that Levinas makes himself, often claiming that his Jewish
writings are the works of an amateur, done on the side of his central work,
his philosophical texts. Despite this distinction, it is very difficult to detect any
difference between the two sets of writings, when it comes to his fundamental
insight. The same image of the human being pervades both. It is worked out
differently more systematically, in a more technical and careful language in his
philosophical writings. Levinas also very rarely refers to Jewish sources in these
latter, although occasionally, at crucial points, they appear, suggesting that the same
process of translating of Jewish wisdom into a Western language is occurring in both
sets of texts. Thus, from the point of view of basic insights into the human condition
98
Annette Aronowicz
that the philosophical works do not have. They bathe in the realities
of Jewish life in France during the 1950s and 1960s. Levinass thought
here, even if less systematic, gains a certain kind of concreteness. This is
particularly true of his Talmudic readings, which give us the opportunity
to catch his insights as if guiding practice, translated into action. I do not
envisage a study of Levinass contribution to the philosophy of education,
however, without a study of his major philosophical works. What I wish
to do here is merely a first step.
Difficult Freedom, the first set of writings to be considered here,
is a collection of essays Levinas wrote between 1950 and 1963.2 In
this period, he was himself the principal of a Jewish high school, the
training center for the teachers of the Alliance Israelite Universelle
in the Mediterranean basin.3 Most, if not all of these essays were
originally published in Jewish community journals and reviews. Written
concurrently with his first great philosophical work, Totality and Infinity,
published in 1961, they show us a man working and thinking in two
worlds, the Jewish and the Western one. In fact, how properly to think
about the relationship between these two worlds forms the key subject
of his reflections on education.
Levinass analysis starts not with what the relationship between these
two civilizations should be, but with what it actually is. If we were to
use Joseph Schwabs vocabulary, his analysis focuses primarily on the
commonplace society, broadly understood as the political, social, and
and from the point of view of the relation of the two traditions to each other, the
dichotomy between the Jewish writings and the philosophical writings does not
hold.
The original volume was published in 1963. The second edition, published in 1976,
contains both additions to and subtractions from the original. I will refer primarily
to the first edition here, because I have relied on some essays which no longer
appear in the second, but I will also occasionally make reference to the second,
because of its inclusion of one important article which does not appear in the first.
Difficile liberte has been translated into English by Sean Hand as (1990). Difficult
Freedom, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. I have, however, used my own
translation of passages from this book.
The school in question is the Ecole Normale Israelite Orientale, known as ENIO. It
continues to operate but, since the mass emigration of North African Jews, no longer
trains for the same mission.
Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas
99
intellectual climate in which Jews currently find themselves.4 There are

a good many reflections on student, teacher, and subject matter as well in
these essays, but Levinas makes clear that the general climate in which
Jews function, the Europe of the Modern State, plays a determining role
in how the other commonplaces are to be thought about.5
His description of the contemporary situation of European Jews is
structured around several philosophical presuppositions. The first is that
it is ultimately impossible for anything spiritual to survive without
expression at the level of a State. This has to do with the nature of
spirit itself.6 Spirit, according to Levinas, manifests itself in publicly
recognized forms, in the way time and space is organized. If there is
no sign of a personal experience in the time and space within which a
society lives that experience loses all authority, evaporates into a private
dream. But who determines that experience gets reflected in the division
of holidays and workdays? Who determines that experience be reflected
in the organization of space, making certain buildings central and others
peripheral? Ultimately it is the State. Thus, in giving subjectivity public
expression, the State, says Levinas, also guarantees its survival as spirit,
as objective reality.
Given this, the situation of Jews as Jews in Europe since the Emancipation has been very precarious, precisely because they have been
allowed to enter into the space and time of the West. This space and
time is fundamentally Christian.7 One might have concluded otherwise
because the separation of Church and State rendered public space neutral.
Levinas nonetheless argues that this neutrality is merely apparent. Public
time and space, embodying as they do spiritual realities, remain Christian
through and through. The holidays of the European States still primarily
4
5
6
7
I am, of course, referring to Joseph Schwabs notion of the four component parts
which structure the field of education: teacher, student, subject, society.
For a discussion consecrated mainly to the question of teachers, for instance, see
his essay (1963). Le probleme actuel de leducation juive en Occident, in Difficile
liberte, Paris: Albin Michel, pp. 280284. (Henceforth, I will refer to this edition
as DL 1; and to the second, 1976, edition, as DL 2.) His references to students are
strewn throughout the text. In the above-mentioned essay, he speaks particularly of
the needs and potential of North African Jewish students, recently immigrated to
France.
The essay in which this position is most boldly laid out is Judaisme Prive, in DL
1, pp. 293295.
This is a theme that occurs practically in every essay. See, for instance, DL 1, pp.
26970, 295, 302.
100
Annette Aronowicz
derive from the Christian calendar. The landscapes are, as if naturally,

still formed around churches and cathedrals. Thus, no matter what the
weakening of belief might be among individuals, the public realm still
objectifies Christian realities, not only in the holidays and landscapes
previously mentioned, but also in the public schools, in which the great
Western classics, imbued with Christian language, form the backbone of
the curriculum.
The problem, for Levinas, is not that Jews live in a predominantly
Christian culture. After all, they have done so for nearly two millennia.
The problem, rather, is that since the Emancipation, Jews have come
to view the Jewish tradition as something merely private, with no
possible or desirable repercussions in the public realm. This was, in fact,
the agreement Jews concluded in order to be accepted as full-fledged
citizens of the modern State.8 They made it in good conscience, thinking
that by preserving a private Judaism the Judaism of the synagogue and
of private practices they were preserving the best part of Judaism, the
spiritual life. They envisaged a life made up of a Jewish half, visible
in the home, in the innermost chambers of the heart, and a Western
half, active in politics, in business, in the professions in general. This,
however, was based on a misunderstanding of the workings of the spirit.
A life of prayer, even of practice, without any repercussion on the public
realm, loses all authority and eventually fades away. By spiritualizing
Judaism, the modern State and its citizens spirited it away.
The problem Jewish education faces, then, according to Levinas, is not
in the first place the problem of better and more teachers, of a change in
the curriculum, or a new, more vibrant pedagogy, although he admits all
these need attention.9 The fundamental problem is that classical Jewish
sources do not find their truths reflected in the external reality in which
Jews live. Without an echo in the public realm, they have lost their
authority.
It is important to note that this loss of authority, for Levinas, stems
directly not from a loss of belief, but from a change in the political situation of the Jews, bringing in its wake a change in symbolic
universes.10 Now Jews live in Christian time and space, in a Christian
language, in a way they never have before. There is not in Levinass
8
9
10
DL 1, pp. 267, 289, 292.

DL 1, pp. 286, 303.
DL 1, pp. 271, 289.
101
analysis any kind of simplistic determinism, contending that political

realities determine thought, for thought itself helped to bring about the
reality of the modern State. Nonetheless, the problem of authority is not a
problem reducible to individual intentions, to believing or not believing.
Much larger, impersonal structures are at play.
What, then, is to be done, given that these structural elements exert
their influence independently of individual good will? The first step,
of course, is to take stock of the situation, the very ability to do so
already signalling a change. This change, Levinas insists, is tied to the
creation of the State of Israel.11 Through its very existence, it has once
again put Judaism in the public realm. Despite the fact that its founders
and proponents are predominantly secular, the Jewish tradition suddenly
appears as a public, historical force, challenging the image of it as
something private, individual, reserved for prayer services and a few
charitable organizations.
The fact of the State, deprivatizing, despiritualizing Judaism, makes
possible once more a living Jewish education for it allows Jews to
approach their classical sources as resources for a public life, potentially
opening them up to new markings of public time and space. Levinas has
great hopes that this renewal of Jewish learning take place in Israel, to
which he assigns the task of a new translation of the meaning of the
Jewish tradition.12 But he also thinks that this broadening of perspectives
on Jewish sources, their restored authority to address public issues, will
take place in the Diaspora as well. The creation of the State of Israel has
an objective impact for Jews all over the world.
One might well ask what Levinas could expect from Diaspora Jewry,
given the conditions in which it finds itself, culturally drowned out by
other voices. Is it not condemned to remain a pale reflection of the new
Jewish culture that Israel is eventually to produce? But here we find
that Levinas vehemently insists on Israels need of the Diaspora, in as
11
12
DL 1, pp. 2734, 290291, 295, 306, 319.

Levinas, Emmanuel (1990). Nine Talmudic Readings by Emmanuel Levinas, translated by Annette Aronowicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, (Henceforth
NTR) pp. 910: [...] to translate into a modem idiom the wisdom of the Talmud, to
confront it with the problems of our time devolves, as one of its highest tasks, upon
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Is this not the most noble essence of Zionism?
[...] The Judaism of the Diaspora and a whole mankind astonished by the political
renewal of Israel await the Torah of Jerusalem [...].
102
Annette Aronowicz
equal proportion as the Diaspora is in need of Israel.13 Once again, for

Levinas, it is a matter of brute historical realities. The State, struggling
for survival, has a tendency to promote an image of the human being as
soldier, as tiller of the soil. The loyalty it produces is ultimately local.
The historical experience of Jews in the Diaspora, however, has formed
in them a recognition of the human being beyond all localities. It is this
vision of the human being as human being that Jews in the Diaspora are
called upon to explore, in the language of today, given their placement in
time and space.14 For Levinas, this is not merely a counterbalance to the
image of the patriot-warrior emerging from Israel but also a profound
rectification, expressing the true heritage of the Jewish tradition and its
true gift to mankind.
Thus, while Levinas posits a necessary relationship between the Spirit
and the State, in the end, the spirit must also have a loyalty and an
expression beyond that of the State. In these writings, Judaism cannot be
reduced either to a private set of beliefs or to a nationalism. It needs a
state, but it is not contained within its boundaries.
The educational implications of this vision of Judaism and this is the
focus of Levinass essays is that Diaspora Jewry must recreate its own
educational institutions, rediscovering in the Jewish sources that vision
of the human being so tied to its historical experience and so necessary
for the world. But how to go about creating these institutions? For, as
already noted, the existence of the State of Israel creates a new context,
but does not by itself solve all problems. Here we come across another
basic philosophical assumption.
To put it very simply, Levinas says that what ultimately moves people
is truth,15 truth arrived at through the intellect, through a skillful probing
13
14
15
DL 1, pp. 3068, 317.

In a beautiful essay elsewhere in Difficult Freedom, Heidegger, Gagarine et Nous,
Levinas analyzes the meaning of Gagarins flight into space, against the background
of Heideggerian philosophy, which would have seen in it one more alienation of the
human being from his roots, brought about by technology. He sees it differently,
based on a Jewish vision of man: But what counts perhaps above all is to have
left the Local. For an hour, a man was alive outside of any horizon all was
sky around him, or, more exactly, all was geometrical space. A man existed in the
absolute of homogeneous space. Judaism has always been free in regard to places.
It thus remains loyal to the highest value. The Bible knows only one Holy Land.
A fabulous land which vomits the unjust, a land in which one does not strike roots
unconditionally [...]. DL 1, p. 258.
DL 1, 284.
103
and analyzing.16 In the case of the Jewish tradition, its discovery involves
the mastery of several languages, of a mental universe with conventions
of its own, and a translation of the wisdom found therein into a Western
philosophical language. Only through such a process can the tradition
truly revive, rediscover its universal, public, more than private face. The
truth arrived at in this way is not, of course, a matter of information, but
an illumination as to the fundamental structures of existence.
Levinass insistence in these essays on the centrality of the intellect
might surprise those who know either his Talmudic readings or his
philosophical works. In these, he continuously stresses the importance
of something that precedes the intellect and from which the intellect
derives its direction.17 In Difficult Freedom, on the other hand, he seems
to minimize the importance of irrational attachment or loyalty, claiming
it to be unable to withstand a whiff of reality coming from the outside
world.18
The contradiction, of course, is a false one, in that when Levinas, in
his other works, claims something prior to the intellect, he is referring
to ethics. That is, he claims that the obligation we enact toward another
person is not derived through reason. It is simply already there. Reason
can notice this obligation but does not establish it. It can merely reinforce
or think out its implications in specific situations. In the essays we are
analyzing here, on the other hand, Levinas pits reason or intellect not
against ethical obligation but against sentimental attachment, family
memories, nostalgia. These emotions do not constitute a sufficiently
strong basis to sustain the Jewish tradition. The intellect is called upon
to go beyond them.
Yet it would be incorrect to think that Levinas downplays the role
of emotion or sentiment completely. In order to reenter into the Jewish
tradition, there has to be a prior attachment, a prior trust.19 The intellect
16
17
18
19
Levinass insistence on the centrality of intellectual work as the only road back to
a living Judaism is a central thread, running throughout all the essays. His very
insistence on its importance reveals something about the attitude of most French
Jews of his time about Judaism. See DL 1, pp. 274, 275, 286, 292, 299, 301, 311;
DL 2, p. 377.
See, for instance, his masterful Talmudic commentary Temptation of Temptation,
where reason is made to come in second, not first. NTR, pp. 3050.
DL 1, p. 286.
DL 1, p. 292.
104
Annette Aronowicz
cannot create this attachment. It can only be of influence if this attachment is already present. Strangely enough, says Levinas, this irrational
attachment is often most fiercely felt among people who have abandoned
all practice and all belief. It is precisely through them, he predicts, that
the path back, the path through the intellect, will undoubtedly pass, thus
upsetting all sociological pronouncements about the death of religion.20
The other way the intellect is made to depend on a desire or emotion
it did not create has to do with Levinass understanding of the sociology
of knowledge. The question basically boils down to how Jewish sources
can regain their power to teach, to inform a life, in a society in which
they have stopped being authoritative. Levinas posits that they will
regain this authority only if the people who take them seriously are
also people already well-versed in Western sources, and well-placed in
Western society. He claims that if Jews see the Western Jewish intellectual
elite studying Jewish texts and deriving teachings from them, they too
will begin to see these texts as capable of yielding an urgently needed
teaching.21
One could read this simply as an observation about the emulation of
people with social status, characteristic of all societies. If people with
status do a certain thing, then others less well placed will be moved to
do so. But Levinas also intends something more subtle. In a world which
takes for granted that spiritual nourishment or intellectual breadth comes
from Western sources, it is natural to nourish oneself on the basis of
these sources.22 Knowledge cannot be transmitted without a prior desire
for it. Thus, in Western Europe as it is constituted today, the thirst for
Jewish learning depends to a degree on the honor conferred to it by
Western learning. At least initially. Once one has tasted Jewish sources,
the intellectual life takes on a life of its own. But for an initial contact
with what is no longer known, the authority is originally conferred by
Western culture itself.
Levinas thus envisages a core group of intellectuals at the center of
a revival of the Jewish tradition. He has no expectations that the vast
majority of Jews will turn into scholars. But, he says, this does not
matter. The survival of Judaism has always depended on a small elite of
learned people. What matters is that this small elite change the attitude
20
21
22
DL 1, p. 287.
DL l, pp. 2867, 318.
DL 1, p. 319.
105
of the majority, making them respect Jewish sources as ways to the truth.
Recognized as exacting real intellectual effort once again, Judaism joins
the ranks of the other traditions with a living claim to direct human
life. As a result, Levinas proposes the creation of a number of new
institutions whose purpose would be the increase of Jewish intellectual
life at a high level. For instance, he wants the Jewish community to
invest more in university level Jewish Studies.23 There are already a
number of such chairs, but the programs need to be expanded and
their approach to Jewish sources changed.24 I will engage this topic
when exploring Levinass Talmudic readings. He also suggested the
creation of an international center for Jewish learning, drawing on top
scholars from the university world from different countries.25 This center,
however, would function independently from the universities, and would
be specifically concentrated on the task of translating Jewish wisdom into
the language of the modern world. He also urged the regular association
of people with expertise in Jewish sources, from different walks of life
and of different ideologies, for the purposes of pooling their knowledge
and consolidating a learned lay Jewish body.26
All of these institutions of higher Jewish learning are to feed the
Jewish day schools, not only through their contribution to teaching and
curriculum, but also through the very presence of intellectuals learned
in Jewish sources, of Jewish adults whose ranks students know they
will join. Levinas was fully aware that in proposing to invest in higher
Jewish learning as a first priority, he was running up against a vicious
cycle. Where would these Jewishly educated intellectuals come from,
if not from the day schools which would prepare them for the task?
Nonetheless, he felt that the cycle could be more easily broken by
starting from the top. The prestige tied to real intellectual work would
make the Jewish curriculum appealing to students already exposed to
intellectual effort in their non-Jewish studies. Without this intellectual
prestige, which can only be gained at the price of real accomplishment,
no matter how talented the teachers, how well designed the curriculum,
the original thirst for Jewish learning cannot be stimulated.
23
24
25
26
DL 1, p. 275, 299.
For his criticism of Wissenschaft des Judentums, whose methods predominate at the
university, see DL 1, pp. 300, 3045.
DL 1, pp. 31920.
DL 1, p. 276.
106
Annette Aronowicz
Implicit in this description of the role of the intellect is that the

renaissance it will bring about is to be strictly secular.27 What Levinas
intends by this requires much explanation and I will return to it. Suffice
it to say for now that in order to enter Jewish sources and discover their
truth, one need not have a prior belief in God.28 One needs a prior trust
in the Jewish traditions capacity to teach but this in no way binds one to
what this teaching may be.29 Nor does Levinas assume that one needs a
prior acceptance of the mitzvot as normative.30 He, of course, does not
exclude either a belief in God or the acceptance of mitzvot, either before
or during the process of learning. But the goal remains the discovery of a
truth not bound beforehand by what sorts of questions it can ask nor what
sorts of answers it can receive, by prior commitments to propositions.
This free intellectual roaming is connected to his desire that Jewish
learning should be done by lay people (the same word laic refers to
both secular and lay), people who do not limit the texts relevance to
special religious occasions, but want them to shed light on all aspects
of life.31
But why should Jews go to so much trouble to find the truth, if
indeed seeking truth is the desire of human life? Are there not plenty
of truths available in the Western sources to which they have become
accustomed? Given Plato, Montaigne, Goethe and a plethora of others,
why should Jews bother to learn Hebrew and break their teeth on cryptic
texts, difficult of access?
Levinas never denies the real wisdom to be found in Western learning.
But his answer to these sorts of questions is structured around yet another
presupposition: there is a particular truth in Jewish sources, unavailable
in Western sources, which can only strengthen the universal message
within Western culture, although it does so in a way different from
the Western way. This dialectic between particular and universal is a
many-layered topic in all of Levinass works. Here, I would like to focus
on just one passage, in Difficult Freedom to hint at its complexity. In the
preface, he wrote:
In the wake of the Hitlerian exterminations that were able to take
27
28
29
30
31
DL 1, p. 274, 285, 31213.

DL 1, p. 292.
DL 1, pp. 3001,305. See also NTR, pp. 46.
DL 1, p. 316.
DL 1, pp. 274, 285.
107
place in a Europe christianized for over fifteen centuries, Judaism

turned to its sources. It was Christianity that, until then in the
West, had gotten it used to considering these sources as dried up or
submerged by more living waters. To find oneself Jewish after the
Nazi massacres meant, then, once again to rethink ones position
vis-a`-vis Christianity [...]
But the return to the sources immediately consecrated itself to a
less polemical theme. The experience of Hitler was for many Jews
the brotherly contact with Christians who gave them their whole
heart, that is, risked everything for them. In the face of the rise
of the Third World this memory remains precious. Not because
we want to indulge in the emotions it gives rise to, but because it
reminds us of a long living with one another throughout history, of
a common language and an action in which our opposing destinies
reveal themselves to be complementary.
Thank God, we are not about to preach dubious crusades in order
to tighten ranks among believers, to unite as spiritualists against
a rising materialism! As if against this Third World ravaged by
hunger any opposing front should be presented, as if we should be
thinking of something beside satisfying this hunger, as if all the
spirituality of the world did not reside in the gesture of feeding,
and as if in a broken-down world we have other treasures to rescue
than the gift that it nonetheless received to suffer through the
hunger of someone else. Great is it to eat! said Rabbi Yochanan
in the name of Rabbi Yossi ben Kisma (Sanhedrin l03b). The other
persons hunger physical hunger, hunger for bread is sacred;
only the hunger of the third party puts a limit on its rights; the only
bad materialism is our own. This fundamental inequality perhaps
defines Judaism. A difficult condition. An inversion of the apparent
order. An inversion that must always be begun again. Whence
ritualism, consecrating the Jew to a service without reward, to a
burden carried out at his expense, at his risk and peril. This, in
its original and undeniable sense, is what the Greek word liturgy
means.32
This passage begins by distancing Jews from the Christian tradition
whose truth was not able to withstand the barbarity that overwhelmed
32
DL 2, pp. XIIIIX.
108
Annette Aronowicz
Europe, despite the fact that it had a very long time to penetrate into its
mores. In the essays of Difficult Freedom, Levinas suggests that, in this
respect, Judaism, through its attention to the particular, the specific acts
to do or not to do, prevents its message from turning into an abstraction
crushing the concrete human being in his concrete situation. He calls
it the Mendelssohnian understanding of the particularity of the Jewish
tradition.33 I will come back to this shortly. But immediately upon
faulting the Christian tradition, the Western tradition, in fact, he reminds
his readers that there were Christians who gave everything to save Jews.
Here the two traditions prove complementary. Despite their different
historical destinies, the actions of their adherents converge, revealing a
common spirituality. Thus, the particularity hinted at earlier is erased,
since Jews and Christians share in a similar vision of what is required of
the human being.
He acknowledges that this recognition of a commonality between
Christians and Jews is also partially due to the rise of the Third World.
Rather than emphasizing the difference with the non-European world, he
immediately speaks of the need to respond to its hunger. At this point,
the particularity of the Jewish tradition re-emerges once again. To be
Jewish is to place the others hunger first, thus reversing the seemingly
natural order of first feeding oneself. This priority must be re-established
in every situation. The training ground for it is Jewish ritual, which
Levinas understands as a service not done for the sake of reward, which
one engages in simply to serve.
It is in this way of speaking about ritual that Levinas echoes the
Mendelssohnian argument about the Jewish tradition. Judaism is not
revealed truth, for truth is accessible to all human beings through reason.
Rather, it is revealed legislation, a Law. These sanctions and prohibitions,
given only to Jews, protect the truths of reason by ingraining them in
behavior, forming a whole person. Reason, left to itself, too easily strays
from its own precepts, without a daily discipline to keep it on the right
track. Thus Levinas is not claiming here that Jews are the only ones who
serve. Christians, in his earlier passage, also did. What the Jews have,
however, is a discipline of deeds, the mitzvot, preserving this service
better from the onslaught of the passions.34
33
34
DL 1, p. 313
Levinas will come back to this theme at length in nearly all his Talmudic commentaries. See especially As Old As the World? NTR, pp. 7088.
109
Levinas might also be saying in this passage, as he says elsewhere, that

the very formulation of the spiritual in the Jewish tradition is different
from its formulation in Christianity. It would no longer be a matter of the
same truth as the Christian one, but which Judaism protects better. The
Jewish truth would be a different truth, placing the accent elsewhere.35
That the act of feeding the other is the great spiritual act bespeaks of
a concern for concrete physical needs which the West has often chosen
to label materialistic. In this insistence and in the notion of self that it
implies lie real differences.
But if the particularity of Judaism is underscored here, Levinas once
again immediately connects it to something universal. The gift of feeling
pain because of someone elses hunger is a gift given to everyone, not just
to Jews. Thus, even if the Jewish tradition emphasizes it in a particular
way, what it emphasizes is true of all human beings. Furthermore,
that great particularism of the Jews, their ritual practices, can also be
described, in a precise way, says Levinas by the Greek word liturgy, which
means public service, done at ones own expense. Thus, as specific as
Jewish ritual is, a correlate can be found in a key Western institution.
Yet the movement between particular and universal does not rest on
the universal, as it might seem, given that the reference to liturgy occurs
in the last sentence of the passage as a whole. For certainly the Greek
word liturgy has been re-understood, pumped with new content, because
of Levinass juxtaposition of it to the Jewish sources. The obligation of
feeding a person who is hungry, on the one hand, and paying for the
Athenian fleet or for the Greek dramas, on the other, are not the same
gestures. Jewish particularity echoes in the Greek word at the same time
as its meaning is universalized.
These goings back and forth between the particular and the universal
show that the rediscovery of the Jewish tradition is always already a
dialogue with another, a dialogue which has no resting place. They
also reveal that, although Levinas makes claims about the superiority of
Judaism, those claims are only moments in a dialectic.
From the educational point of view, certain things are clear. The first
is that the impetus to rediscover Jewish sources, to become learned in
them, has to do with a rethinking of who the human being is, against the
horrors of the century. Levinas is thinking of the gas chambers, but he
35
DL 2, p. 391.
110
Annette Aronowicz
is thinking of many other horrors as well.36 One enters Jewish sources,

not to retreat into a closed world, but because the world at large needs a
new, better formulation of what it means to be human. Jewish education,
for Levinas, is not a barrier to intermarriage. It is a barrier to genocide.37
The second educational implication of Levinass thought is that Jewish
particularity, the different truth conveyed through Jewish teachings, can
only emerge by pitting its sources against those of other traditions.
Levinas is resolutely European and it is to the European traditions he
makes reference. I see no reason, however, why the pitting of voice
against voice should be limited to Europe, if Jews find themselves in
other parts of the world or even if they do not. The same principle
maintains: the particularity of ones own tradition is always a matter of
understanding those of others as well, and since that understanding is
not a finite task, the finding of ones own particularity is not a finite
task either, but an on-going labor of rethinking, given what else one is
confronted with.
Levinas does insist on one thing, again and again, though, in this
rediscovery of Jewish sources. It must be done in Hebrew.38 The
uniqueness of the Jewish tradition is not a matter of ideas divorced from
the concreteness of the language in which they are expressed.39 This
language is the only objectification immediately available to Diaspora
Jews of the reality present in the text.40 It creates a space and time of its
own among its speakers. Only through it can Jews, in their particularity
as Jews, engage in conversation with the rest of the world.
Furthermore, the central text to be studied, according to Levinas, is
Talmud. The Bible is also the property of Christians,41 but it is not simply
because of this that Levinas insists on the centrality of Talmud.42 It is in
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
For specific mention of the Holocausts presence in his thought, see DL 2, p. 406.
For a broader list of the horrors of the century in which we find ourselves, see DL
2, p. 390.
DL 2, p. 398. In this particular quote, he speaks of saving Man from shipwreck, not
mentioning genocide in particular, but the larger context of the essay, especially the
list of the centurys horrors, makes this formulation conform to the meaning of the
text.
Here, once again, we come across a repeatedly mentioned theme. See DL 1, pp. 274,
291, 296, 297, 303, 315.
DL 1, p. 274.
DL 1, p. 297.
DL 1, p. 315.
DL 1, pp. 300, 301, 305.
111
the Talmud, he claims, that we come across that extraordinary protection

of the particular, both in thought and act, which he had presented as
the Jewish contribution to the world.43 In placing emphasis on classical
rabbinic texts, those of Mishna and Gemara, Levinas is not erasing the
significance of the Bible. He is making the traditional claim, although
perhaps in a new language, that the Jewish understanding of the Bible
depends on reading it through its rabbinic commentators.
These, in brief, are some of Levinass thoughts on education, as
expressed in Difficult Freedom. One could, no doubt, ask a number of
questions, ask for clarifications on this or that point. I would like to
reserve this until the end, however. For now, I would like to turn to
Levinass Talmudic readings, the first of which was given in 1961. The
one I chose to refer to most often here is from 1963.44 It should allow us
to see the continuity in Levinass thought about Jewish education, but in
another format.
In the previous discussion on Levinass essays in Difficult Freedom,
we have seen several of his assumptions at work: the assumption that
spirit needs public expression, an entry into publicly lived time and
space; the assumption that the intellect and intellectuals are a key to the
rediscovery of the Jewish tradition and its revival in broad segments of
the population; the assumption that Judaism brings with it a particular
teaching, irreducible to the teachings of other traditions, but which is
nonetheless universal, addressing all human beings. In Toward the
Other, as in all of Levinass Talmudic commentaries, it is possible to
see these three assumptions take on flesh. They are not merely being
talked about; they are at work.
In the first place, the Talmudic commentaries can be seen as Levinass
deprivatizing of the Jewish tradition. It will be recalled that in his
analysis, since the Emancipation, European Jews no longer see Judaism
as a public, historical force, reserving this realm for their activities as
secular citizens of their States. The Jewish tradition is supposed to subsist
as what the nineteenth and twentieth centuries understood as religion,
the private relationship of the individual to God, expressed in the prayer
service, or in private charitable organizations. The gist of Levinass
commentary is to reverse this trend by making the Jewish sources
address the public realm directly. For instance, in Toward the Other,
43
44
DL 1, p. 314.
I will be focusing mostly on Toward the Other, in NTR, pp. 1229.
112
Annette Aronowicz
the focus is on the nature of forgiveness. But, while his interpretation

indeed involves descriptions of appropriate and inappropriate inner states
and individual behaviors, he perpetually raises the issue to another level.
The year is 1963. The big question for the European Jewish community
is the attitude it should take toward the Germans. This involved public,
communal acts. For French intellectuals, for example, bathing in the
existentialism fashionable at that time, the urgent question was how to
evaluate both Heideggers work and Heidegger himself. Levinas makes
the Gemara speak directly into that context, in a sudden move that reveals
the criteria for judgment.45
Being Jewish in the Europe of 1963 also involved other decisions of
a more than private nature regarding the Germans. One of these was the
attitude to take toward reparation payments. Levinas once again points
to the factors involved, in a section of his interpretation.46 Connected to
this is the larger issue of what kind of retribution it was possible to exact,
the subject of the entire last section of Toward the Other, in which the
reference to the contemporary situation, made on the basis of the Bible
and midrash, is explicit.47 Thus, in Levinass hands, the Talmud is made
to speak to a burning public issue, affecting the Jews as a people, not
in the immediacy of the prayer service, but in its day-to-day, visible,
political stances.
Another way these commentaries deprivatize the Jewish tradition
involves the very context in which they first appeared. Although we
know them as essays in a book, they were originally delivered orally at
the yearly sessions of French-speaking Jewish intellectuals, a conference
instituted by Levinas and a few others in 1957, which has remained
an institution to this day.48 In glancing at the list of participants, one
notices, first of all, that many were not academics. They were medical
doctors, musicians, writers, among others. Levinas himself, in the early
years, before his appointment as Professor at Nanterre, is referred to
as a high school principal. One also observes, in leafing through the
45
46
47
48
NTR, p. 25.
NTR, p. 21.
NTR, pp. 2529.
The list of participants and the contents of the conferences, including very often
discussions following the talks, can be found in various volumes of Actes du colloque,
published by Presses Universitaires Francaises. They are usually listed under the title
of a given conference. For instance, those in which Toward the Other is included
are entitled La conscience juive face a lhistoire: le pardon.
113
collected annals of the yearly conferences, that the participants reflect a

mixture of learnings. Some people have a good deal of knowledge about
Jewish sources. Others are learned only in Western sources. The papers
were given by both. Each year, though, no matter what topic was chosen
for the conference as a whole, there were always two pre-established
presentations, that of Andre Neher on the Bible, and that of Levinas on
Talmud.49
These conferences, then, created a public body, engaged in an activity
tied neither to the synagogue, the private Jewish space, nor to the
university, the place of the State. They were located in a different space,
although related to the other two. While it is true that the conference
was only a once-a-year event, it nonetheless drew Jews into intellectual
inquiry around issues affecting Jews as Jews. It made visible to the larger
Jewish public who attended this conference or who simply knew about it
that secular Jewish intellectuals were studying Jewish sources. Although
many of the participants in the conference were not knowledgeable in any
tradition but the Western, the very fact that they were exchanging ideas
with those who were knowledgeable in the Jewish tradition made the
Jewish sources public property, took them out of a sectarian context, made
them valid conversation partners in the broader intellectual discourse of
the times.50
The way Levinas universalizes the meaning of Talmud can also be
viewed as a form of deprivatization. I have spoken earlier of the complex
dialectic between universal and particular in his thought and will return
to it yet again later. For now, I would like to stress that Levinass way
of universalizing the meaning of the text differs from many previous
nineteenth and twentieth century attempts in this direction. It is in that
difference that the deprivatization lies.
It is widely known that the main thrust of Western Jewish scholars
work upon their own sources since the Emancipation has been apologetic.
That is, it has been a defense of the Jewish tradition by showing that, in
its essence, it coincided perfectly with the great aspirations of Western
humanism, and, in fact, even inspired them. Levinass universalizing,
49
50
Andre Neher, renowned both as a philosopher and as a biblical scholar, held the
Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Strasbourg. He moved to Israel in 1968.
In his essays in Difficult Freedom, Levinas had expressed the wish that Jewish
sources, especially Talmud, be made conversation partners with the contemporary
world. See pp. 301, 305.
114
Annette Aronowicz
while in many respects in continuity with this project, also turns it

on its head. The continuity is in his stress on ethics, on a particular
ethical message as the chief import of Judaism.51 But the turning of
Enlightenment apologetics on its head begins first of all in his choice of
Talmud as the text from which to draw these ethics. Nineteenth century
thought, both Christian and Jewish, relied in its defense of Judaism
mainly on the prophets. It is true that Buber, in this century, has pointed
to the Hassidic tales, but even for him, or perhaps more accurately also
for him, the Talmud was not a starting point to rediscover the value of
the Jewish tradition. Its seemingly picayune discussions, mostly about
acts binding only on Jews, did not suggest itself, in the context of our
times, as a suitable starting point to claim a universal ethical meaning.
Indeed, we need only to turn to the Mishna and the Gemara that Levinas
comments on in Toward the Other, Tractate Yoma pp. 85a85b. This
centers on what is and what is not forgiven on Yom Kippur, involving
inescapably Jewish ritual practices.
Without ever eliminating the layer of practice the text clearly refers to,
concerning only Jews, Levinas nonetheless aims straight for the meaning
within the practice, a meaning valid for all human beings. For instance, he
cites the first sentence of Tractate Yoma pp. 85a-b (The transgressions
of man toward God are forgiven him by the Day of Atonement), and
concludes that this does not mean that there is some miraculous power
inherent in the observances of Yom Kippur, but rather that this sentence
suggests something about the process of healing itself. Once an individual
transgresses, it is very difficult for him to find the strength to free himself
from his transgression because the very inner mechanism he relied on
to keep himself pure has itself been weakened. Thus, A set day in the
calendar and all the ceremonial of solemnity of Yom Kippur are needed
for the damaged moral conscience to reach its intimacy and reconquer
the integrity that no one can reconquer for it.52 This leads Levinas to
speculate on the relationship of ritual and morality: Perhaps this gives
us a general clue as to the meaning of the Jewish ritual and of the
ritual aspect of social morality itself. Originating in collective law and
commandment, ritual is not at all external to conscience. It conditions
51
52
DL 1, p. 314.
NTR, p. 17.
115
it and permits it to enter into itself and to stay awake. It preserves it,
prepares its healing.53
What started as a comment about Yom Kippur as a public observance
necessary to pull the individual out of the whirlpool of his subjectivity and
to restore his inner balance becomes an observation on this relationship
everywhere. Conscience is never just an individual entity, forming itself
out of its own decisions. It is formed by communal injunctions and
is restored and protected by these same communal forms. If we were
to doubt that Levinas intended this to be an observation valid for all
societies, we would only need to notice the repeated use of the word
ritual. He does not say mitzvot. Yet, his insight about all human beings
derives from a sentence in the Mishna. Jewish practice, as particular as
it is, reveals a truth applicable to all people. The newness in this
universalizing is that it deprivatizes that part of the Jewish tradition that
was thought to be least open to the world at large.
But it is not only in his choice of classical rabbinic sources that Levinas
universalizes differently from those in the Enlightenment tradition but
also in that he is not concerned to harmonize the truths in the Jewish texts
with those of Western humanism, although he is not bent on discovering
disharmony either.54 Rather, he bases himself on Jewish sources as points
of reference from which to judge contemporary Western culture. Thus, in
the same passage on ritual and morality, he makes a claim which could
not have been immediately well received by either Jews or Christians in
the middle of the twentieth century:
Are we to think that the sense of justice dwelling in the Jewish
conscience that wonder of wonders is due to the fact that for
centuries Jews fasted on Yam Kippur, observed the Sabbath and
the food prohibitions, waited for the Messiah, and understood the
love of ones neighbor as a duty of piety? Should one go so far as
to think that contempt for the mitzvah compromises the mysterious
Jewish sense of justice in us? If we Jews, without ritual life and
without piety, are still borne by a previously acquired momentum
toward unconditional justice, what guarantees do we have that we
will be so moved for long?55
53
54
55
Ibid.
This entire line of reasoning is most clearly spelled out in Antihumanism and
Education, in DL 2, pp. 385401.
NTR, pp. 1718.
116
Annette Aronowicz
In a world which viewed ritual practice as an anachronism, Levinas is

suggesting that it is an essential conditioning element of morality, and
this time ritual is referred to as mitzvot. Since Jewish ritual separates
the Jews out as a group, requiring a different calendar, different food
preparation, restrictions on table fellowship, it also very much modifies,
if not challenges, the notion of the individual as individual in the modern
State, inherently suspicious of all corporate existence. In suggesting a
separate Jewish existence within the modern European State, without
in the least challenging the loyalty to that State, he is making room
for a public, historical presence, countering the lack of separate public
time and space from which Jews have suffered since the Emancipation.
This separateness, he maintains, is the better to recognize and serve
others, but separateness it nevertheless is: And ecumenicism seems to
us a key idea, not because it allows us to be recognized at our level
by the Christian, but because brought back to the Law, we work for
our Christian brothers.56 That is, the Jews do not meet the Christians
as brothers within the Christian system, which allots them a space, but
outside that system, within their own, that of the Law. This requires
making room for a different set of behaviors and a different set of
assumptions.
Finally, Levinass universalizing differs from the nineteenth century
version also in that he refuses to spell out the meaning of the Jewish
tradition in a few, static principles, to which one can then claim to adhere.
Rather, he insists that the meaning of the Jewish tradition reveals itself
only in a life-long learning of its texts, the very act of learning being the
center rather than the principles one extracts from this or that passage.
Thus, he always refuses to make a list of concepts defining Judaism: a
real culture cannot be summarized, for it resides in the very effort that
cultivates it.57 In Toward the Other, he warns at the very beginning of
his lesson that the people who are listening to him should not walk away
with the illusion that they now know what the Jewish tradition thinks of
forgiveness.58
It is, of course, impossible to read Levinass works without some idea,
even a clear idea, of the essence of Judaism, as he sees it. But by
stressing the inadequacy of the mere exposition of ideas and the reality of
56
57
58
DL 2, p. 398.
DL 1, p. 277.
NTR, p. 14.
117
persistent, life-long study, he is giving back to the Jewish sources some

of their thickness. It is not a matter of a few politically correct thoughts,
even were these thoughts to be his, but of a practice of thinking, which
differs in material and in kind from that of the university world. Once
again, Levinas points to the three-dimensional existence of a tradition
that seemed reduced to ethical monotheism, an abstraction with no
living space in daily life at all.
A Talmudic commentary such as Toward the Other also embodies
what Levinas had written about in his earlier essays concerning the
role of the intellect as the chief vehicle of Jewish revival. We have
already mentioned the sociological aspect of this stress on the intellect,
in reference to the context in which these Talmudic readings were given.
I would now like to turn to Levinass repeated association of the intellect
with secularity, with an entry into the sources not based on theological
presuppositions.
We have already mentioned that belief in God was absolutely not a
prerequisite for entry into the meaning of rabbinic sources. What then
does he do when confronted with the theological language in these
sources? In Toward the Other, he explains the method he will be
faithful to in the remainder of his commentaries:
Those present for the first time at this session of Talmudic commentaries should not stop at the theological language of these lines.
These are sages thoughts, not prophetic visions. My effort always
consists in extricating from this theological language meanings
addressing themselves to reason. The rationalism of the method
does not, thank God, lie in replacing God by Supreme Being or
Nature or, as some young men do in Israel, by the Jewish people or
the Working Class. It consists, first of al1, in a mistrust of everything
in the texts studied that could pass for a piece of information about
Gods life, for a theosophy; it consists in being preoccupied, in the
face of each of these apparent news items about the beyond, with
what this information can mean in and for mans life.59
His method consists in avoiding speculating about the nature of God,
something outside the bounds of observation, inaccessible to reason.
Each time God is mentioned, therefore, he translates what is said about
59
Ibid.
118
Annette Aronowicz
God into a statement about human beings, the language about God
becoming a language pointing to human realities.
In doing so, he intends to detect this human being through the context
against which the statement about God occurs in the text, the text being
about the experience of human beings, their moral experiences.60 He is
not claiming to be doing this because believing in God has become a
problem for human beings. He is claiming to be doing this because in
the Talmud itself, the experience of God is itself translated into moral
experience.61 He is thus proposing that his own translation of theological
language into ethical language is in the rabbinic tradition itself and that
it is not a loss of the theological meaning but the way human beings
have been given to understand the Divine in the first place. There may be
other ways as well but even they find expression on the level of ethics,
at least in the Talmud.
To illustrate what he means, I focus on his chief interpretation of
the word God, as it appears in Toward the Other. The context is a
discussion in the Gemara contesting the prior statement in the Mishna
that one needs to seek the forgiveness of the offended party, for otherwise
God will not forgive. Rabbi Joseph bar Helbe claims, on the basis of a
biblical verse (1 Samuel 2) that God does reconcile individual wills, even
without the guilty partys direct seeking of forgiveness from the offended
party. The Gemara ends by strongly opposing his position and siding
with that of the Mishna. In the process of unpacking the Gemaras terse
statements, we find Levinas summarizing its final view in the following
way:
No, the offended individual must always be appeased, approached,
and consoled individually. Gods forgiveness or the forgiveness
of history cannot be given if the individual has not been honored.
God is perhaps nothing but this permanent refusal of a history
which would come to terms with our private tears. Peace does not
dwell in a world without consolations.62
This is a key instance of Levinass translation of theological language
into the language of ethics. The being of God, his is, is translated into
the action of human beings, what they do. What they do is very specific.
60
61
62
Ibid.
NTR, p. 15.
NTR, p. 20 (my emphasis).
119
It is their refusal to accept the suffering of others as somehow justified

by a greater good, which will emerge later in history. God is both in
the act of responding to the suffering of individuals crushed by large
historical events and in the attempt to prevent that suffering. He is not a
proposition we consent to. He is a deed we do. In other words, God is
not accessible through a thought that would pinpoint his essence, even if
this essence would be moral acts toward the vulnerable. He is not to be
thought. Only in our action, do we meet up with a reality that could be
given that name, the name God.
In Toward the Other, this interpretation of theology as ethics, of
what is God? as what is done by human beings recurs at the end of
the lesson as well. At stake is the horrible death of seven sons of Saul,
executed by the Gibeonites in retribution for the suffering they endured
at the hand of Saul himself. The bodies of the seven were left out for
six months on the rocks to which they had been nailed. The Midrash
Levinas cites in his interpretation of this biblical passage asks if it is just
to punish the sons for the faults of the father. The answer: it is better
that a letter of the Torah be damaged than that the Name of the Eternal
be profaned.63
Levinas responds: To punish children for the faults of their parents
is less dreadful than to tolerate impurity when the stranger is injured.
Let passersby know this: in Israel, princes die a horrible death because
strangers were injured by the sovereign. The respect for the stranger and
the sanctification of the Name of the Eternal are strangely equivalent.64
Once again, we come across a translation of the word God in which his
reality is associated with a human response to another, here the response
to the stranger.
Levinas is not claiming that belief in God requires moral acts or even
that God requires moral acts of us. He is claiming that responding to
the vulnerability of others, the stranger being vulnerable by definition,
brings us in contact with a reality which our word God points to. There
is, therefore, a transcendent dimension in our relationship to others. The
obligation that immediately seizes us is not a reasoned choice we make.
It comes from elsewhere. In his Talmudic commentary The Temptation
of Temptation, where he speaks at length about the peculiar nature of
63
64
NTR, p. 27.
Ibid.
120
Annette Aronowicz
this obligation, he refers to it, in the very end, as the impossibility of

escaping from God.65
Much more needs to be said about the relationship of ethics to the
transcendent in Levinass thought. After all, this is his central contribution
to twentieth century thought. For our purposes, suffice it to say that
merely being moral, in the sense of following the conventions labeled
as good in ones society, is not what Levinas meant by ethics. For him,
it always involves a responsibility to another that, in its very enactment,
reveals a movement out of our finiteness, a transcendent moment. In this
relocation of transcendence, the secular finds its religious dimension,
and the religious is secularized. Thus, what Levinas means by a secular
approach to Jewish sources ends up, strangely enough, finding another
way of speaking about God, a way focusing on deeds and not on
beliefs.66
If Levinass approach to Talmud does not require a prior belief in God,
this is no way means that it requires no prior presuppositions at all. As
previously mentioned, it requires trust of a very specific kind, a trust that
a meaning speaking directly to our condition as human beings can be
found there. This trust is not merely free-floating, but yields certain rules
of method.
In the first place, it supposes that juxtapositions within the Talmud
are always meaningful. In other words, the Gemara is not just a loose
compilation of discussions, with digressions unrelated to each other. If
two topics are found side by side, it is the responsibility of the reader
to find the link between them, even if the juxtaposition seems arbitrary.
To take an example from Toward the Other, in the Gemara Levinas is
treating, there is a particularly dense passage:
Rabbi Isaac has said: Whoever hurts his neighbor, even through
words, must appease him [to be forgiven], for it is said (Proverbs
6: 13): My son, if you have vouched for your neighbor, if you
have pledged your word on behalf of a stranger, you are trapped by
your promises; you have become the prisoner of your word. Do the
65
66
NTR, p. 50.
There is a more Kantian reading of ethics in Toward the Other, in which the word
God is translated as the adherence to a universal moral principle or Law. See for
instance, NTR, pp. 17, 20, 22. This understanding will drop out in the course of his
Talmudic commentaries, to be replaced by an understanding of ethics as a response
to another unmediated by a prior reasoned consent to a principle.
121
following, then, my son, to regain your freedom, since you have

fallen into the others power: go, insist energetically, and mount an
assault upon your neighbor (or neighbors]. And the Gemara adds
its interpretation of the last sentence: If you have money, open a
generous hand to him, if not assail him with friends.67
Levinas acknowledges that on the surface the verses from Proverbs seem
to function as a prooftext, unrelated to the issue of verbal offense at
all. After all, what does the fact that someone has guaranteed a loan
made to a third party have to do with insulting someone? Even though
Levinas will eventually get to the common consequences in both cases,
involving potential financial compensation from ones own pocket in
both instances, he does not see the analogy between verbal insult and
making oneself the guarantor of a loan as either senseless or arbitrary.
The juxtaposition of the two raises a philosophical question, a question
about the nature of language:
This recourse to a quotation which seems totally unrelated to the
topic, and to which only a seemingly forced reading brings us
back from afar, teaches us that speech, in its original essence, is a
commitment to a third party on behalf of our neighbor: the act par
excellence, the institution of society. The original function of speech
consists not in designating an object in order to communicate with
the other in a game with no consequences but in assuming toward
someone a responsibility on behalf of someone else. To speak is to
engage the interest of men. Responsibility would be the essence of
language.68
The other principle of method resulting from a trust placed in the text has
to do with the way the rabbis quote biblical passages. Rather than seeing
them exclusively or even primarily as prooftexts bent on justifying a
specific rabbinic position, Levinas sees them as clues the rabbis give to
their readers as to the philosophical issues they wish to raise between the
lines. Thus, it becomes important to investigate the context from which a
specific quotation is taken. To take an example from Toward the Other,
when the rabbis cite Genesis 50: 17 to establish that one must seek
forgiveness from the offended party up to three times, if he refuses to
grant it the first time, the fact that just this verse was chosen to establish
67
68
NTR, p. 20.
NTR, pp. 201.
122
Annette Aronowicz
this fact rather than any other is in itself significant, states Levinas. It
occurs in the context of the story of Joseph and his brothers. Thus while
the quotation chosen, in its ternary rhythm, indicates a behavior to be
taken toward the offended party, it also suggests what we are asking
forgiveness for, each time we have offended. Betraying ones brother is
the essential element present in all offenses, even verbal.69
We see, then, that Levinass stress on the intellect, on the secular, is a
stress on turning theology into ethics, as the basis of hermeneutics, of the
act of interpretation. The ethics undergirding this way of interpreting yield
certain specific rules in regard to rabbinic texts. Nothing is binding in
Levinass commentary save the hermeneutics itself. That is, no conclusion
he comes to about, for example, the essence of speech, or the relationship
of ritual and conscience, is binding. The only thing that binds is the
expectation of finding a meaning illuminating human actions. Reason is
thus left free to roam, with the only precondition being a prior respect
given to the authors of the text.
As to the third philosophical principle given embodiment in these
Talmudic readings, I want mainly to stress two aspects. It will be recalled
that one of the ways Levinas has spoken about the particularity of
Judaism was that it protected its truth from becoming mere abstraction
through incessant confronting of the general with the particular. I will
not repeat what Levinas said about mitzvot, as one of the chief protectors
of particularity. Rather, I wish to turn to another aspect of this protection,
which the Talmudic commentaries are best designed to illustrate.
I have mentioned before Levinass insistence on the coherence of the
Talmudic text. Yet, Levinas never translates the Talmudic passage he is
interpreting into an expository essay in which all the links between parts
follow a smooth progression. His commentary is bound to the phrasing
of the text. As coherent as his explanations of any given passage may be,
his essays are structured around individual sentences or paragraphs from
the sugya, breaking the impulse of thought to substitute itself for details
through generalization. In his commentary, in a very visible way, thought
is forced to subordinate itself to the particular, to break its rhythm in
order to take it into account.
But another way the particularity of the tradition works is to leave
the concrete concrete, without any accompanying generalizations. This
lack of exposition is, in fact, the characteristic style of the Talmud.
69
NTR, p. 22.
123
Levinas himself does generalize, expose in a Western, sequential logic,

and yet, every once in a while, he leaves the concrete almost entirely
in its concreteness. The example proposed here once again comes from
Toward the Other. It involves that image of who the human being is
that Levinas pursues in all his works, both the commentaries and his
philosophy proper. We have already mentioned several formulations of
this image, as, for instance, in the Preface to Difficult Freedom, where
to be human was to feel the hunger of the other and to make of the act
of feeding the central gesture of a human life. In a previous passage
in Toward the Other, we also came across the person who refuses to
justify the suffering of others as necessary to the historical process. In
both these cases, the formulation is a generalization, unaccompanied by
a concrete example. In the very last paragraph of Toward the Other,
however, the formulation occurs differently. We are once again talking
about the seven sons of Saul, nailed to the rocks. The mother of several
of them, Ritzpah Bat Aiah, covers their bodies every evening for six
months to protect them from beasts of prey. Levinas concludes:
And what remains as well [...] is the image of this woman, this
mother, this Ritzpah bat Aiah, who, for six months watches over
the corpses of her sons, together with the corpses that are not
her sons, to keep from the birds of the air and the beast of the
fields, the victims of the implacable justice of men and of God.
What remains after so much blood and tears shed in the name
of immortal principles is individual sacrifice, which amidst the
dialectical rebounds of justice and all its contradictory about-faces,
without hesitation, finds a straight and sure way.70
Once again, we come across that gesture of protecting the vulnerable,
which is sometimes impotent to save them from their fate, but nonetheless
finds a way to them. The point here, though, is that Levinass generalization adheres closely to an image, a very powerful image, that of this
woman, who despite the rights and wrongs of a situation simply sought
a way to respond to the nakedness of human beings, their nakedness
still being nakedness even though they were dead. The generalization,
in accompanying the image, does not gain the upper hand. While this
image is biblical, Levinas tells us that the rabbis preserved this mode
of conveying their points. He calls it the paradigmatic method, meaning
70
NTR, p. 29.
124
Annette Aronowicz
that a concrete image or reference functions in such a way that it can

be inserted into many different contexts, always releasing yet another
aspect of its potential sense.71
Levinass claim about the particular content of the Jewish tradition,
therefore, is reflected in the very form in which the Talmud expresses
itself. The defense of particularity occurs in the very mode of expressing
that defense. Someone knowledgeable in non-Jewish traditions might
argue that this wariness of the naked concept is also expressed elsewhere,
that it is not specifically Jewish. This would then set in motion that
dialectic which is always part of Levinass emphasis on Judaisms
particularity. Locating it allows one to see it at work elsewhere, but
never in an identical way. What remains is not a stubborn insistence on
Jewish uniqueness but a responsibility not to allow generalizations, even
about oneself, to float freely at the expense of the specific phenomena
confronting one.
Levinass understanding of the particularity of the Jewish tradition
also, it will be recalled, had to do with Hebrew. Ideas, or even symbolic structures are not independent of the language in which they are
expressed. The specificity of Hebrew has everything to do, according
to Levinas, with the specificity of the meaning contained in the Jewish
sources. These Talmudic commentaries, however, were always given in
French. What, then, happens to Hebrew in the process?
In the first place, it must be underscored that Levinas always based
his interpretation on his own translation from the Hebrew or Aramaic,
which he passed out to his audiences at the beginning of his lessons.
He himself, at the very least, went back to the original languages. One
might conclude that he would have preferred to use the Hebrew text
directly had his audience known these languages sufficiently well. But
the reliance on Hebrew, for Levinas, always required translation into
ones own idiom. Even were that idiom to be Hebrew, it would still have
to find expression in the currently spoken form. On the other hand, he
always asked that his translation be thrown away after the lesson. The
Hebrew original remains primary and must be returned to again and
again, in every new act of interpretation. A translation, while it is part of
the process of rendering sense, never has authoritative status.
The question might arise as to what Levinas does with the long line
of commentators through which it is customary to pass, in the Jewish
71
NTR, p. 71.
125
tradition, in order to derive meaning either from Bible or Talmud for

this too, in most cases, involves the primacy of Hebrew. In regard to
the Bible, it is clear both from Levinass explicit statements about how
to interpret it and also from what he himself does in a lesson like
Toward the Other, that the passage through commentary is essential.72
In regard to Talmud, the matter is somewhat more complicated. Those
in the know can detect the presence of Rashi and other commentators
in Levinass own interpretation. Yet Levinas rarely cites these classical
voices. Every once in a while, although this too is rare, he cites his
own teacher, Mordechai Shoushani. There are, on the other hand, not
infrequent references to Western philosophical or literary names, both
classical and contemporary.
These references do not all function in the same way. The voice of
Shoushani, for example, lends authority to Levinass key interpretative
moves.73 With the other Jewish commentators, the situation is not as
clear. Maimonides, for instance, in Toward the Other, does function as
a reference that lends authority to Levinass hermeneutic, but the touch
is definitely very light.74 That is, it would be difficult to conclude that
Levinass method derives from Maimonides in any direct way. He is
content to place himself in a tradition of thought, thus attenuating the
uniqueness of his approach, but the connection is not tightly drawn. The
references to Western authors, however, are never substantiations of any
claim. They appear in the text as part of the process of translation which
understanding Jewish sources involves for Levinas.
This becomes evident when we look more closely at his understanding
of Rabbi Joseph bar Helbes position in Toward the Other. The rabbi
is citing a verse from a psalm, not merely for the sake of airing a
textual contradiction which needs to be resolved, but because he is a
proponent of a certain view of history, in which individuals are means
to an end greater than them. In this framework, if a person offends his
neighbor, what difference does it make in the larger scheme of things?
The important thing is not to betray the historical process, as it is working
itself out in his own time, to be on the side that will bring about the
future: Rabbi Joseph bar Helbe is skeptical regarding the individual.
72
73
74
Emmanuel Levinas, Lau-dela` du verset, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1982, p. 164.
See, for instance, NTR, p. 98, where Levinas refers to Shoushani (although not by
name) to substantiate his universalization of the meaning of the term Israel.
NTR, p. 14.
126
Annette Aronowicz
He believes in the universal. An individual against an individual has no

importance at all; but when a principle is undermined, then you have
catastrophe.75
This manner of viewing history echoes the philosophy of Hegel,
Levinas tells us explicitly, although it was already clear in the very
language he used to characterize Rabbi Joseph bar Helbes position.76
But as soon as he resorts to Hegelian language, he points out that
the Gemara categorically refuses this approach. His reference to Hegel
had set the Talmudic passage in a Western context, even uses Hegelian
language to express it, only to challenge the position that this language
expresses.
Perhaps, then, the relative paucity of references to Jewish commentators has to do, not with a principled opposition to their use, since it
is clear that Levinas does draw some of his interpretations from them,
but with a choice to make the Talmud live in a Western discussion. In
that discussion, the rabbis are both partners and opponents. To bring
out this aspect of the Jewish tradition, since the chief voice is already
the Talmud, Jewish references are not multiplied, to leave room for the
Western conversation partners.
It might be argued, in response, that this reduces the Jewish tradition
to being a mere sub-clause in a Western sentence, subsuming it within a
Western framework. To this it must be rejoindered that, for Levinas, the
Jews are ultimately a Diaspora community, whose function is precisely
to sound a different voice in the conversation around them. The return
from Exile, for him, is not a matter of a Jewish culture in splendid
isolation, finally purified of extraneous elements, but of a world in which
the Jewish vision of the human being is finally universally enacted. The
Westernization of Jewish culture is not its corruption. It is part of the ebb
and flow of the universalization of its message. In this respect, both the
State of Israel and the Diaspora are parts of the same movement.
Conclusions
Levinass reflections on education are addressed by a Western Jew to
other Western Jews, in a context in which the Jewish tradition has
75
76
NTR, p. 19.
NTR, p. 20.
127
been submerged by other voices. Nearly half a century later, neither

his analysis of the situation nor his proposed solutions have lost their
validity.
Yet I have a not fully articulated question about how to relate Levinass
vision of the educated Jew Western and Jewish to contexts different
from those to which he was addressing himself. I am thinking, for
instance, of people for whom the mitzvot are binding in a way different
from the way they are for Levinas. For Levinas, they are not what is
immediately and unquestioningly given. They contribute to the creation
of a certain sort of human being which it is crucial to protect, but it
is being that sort of human being, and not the mitzvot in themselves
which are binding in his work.77 We are, therefore, from the start, in two
radically different mental universes, not least in the sorts of questions
one asks of the texts, and in the authority one accords them to prescribe
norms of behavior.
Levinas is very much concerned with behavior, with concrete acts
to do or not to do, and yet, even more so, he wants to extricate the
principles embodied in a given action. Thus, for example, accepting
monetary reparations from the Germans is justified, on the basis of
the text he is interpreting. It is justified, however, not because of legal
precedents but because of what the text reveals to be the nature of
repentance. Ones acceptance of reparation payments would be on the
basis of understanding a principle, derived from the text, which one
accepts as true. It would not be, first and foremost, because it was
halachically prescribed.
Nothing in Levinass work opposes halachic prescriptions. The emphasis, however, remains on clarifying the universal meaning within each
one. He himself stated that although, in his commentaries, he restricted
himself to aggadah, his method could apply just as well to halachah. That
is, it could be used to clarify the philosophical principles undergirding
or running parallel to the legal ones. This has yet to be tried on a wider
basis. The question remains whether it is desirable that this be done.
Not coming myself from a world in which the mitzvot are binding,
I cannot speak in other peoples names. It might be retorted by voices
within this world that, given the special expertise involved in halachic
reasoning, and the primacy of conforming behavior to its conclusions,
there is neither time nor interest for Levinass approach. Yet, despite my
77
DL 2, pp. 400401.
128
Annette Aronowicz
point of reference, I cannot help thinking that it would be salutary to

set legal discussion in an extra-legal context. The concentration on the
minutiae of acts to do or not to do, without any ethical frame, in Levinass
sense, in which to understand specific prescriptions, produces a world
in which the image of the human being as human being remains buried.
Surely, it is dangerous in any epoch, but most especially in our own,
when others live among us and with us, not to have an ever-renewed
reflection on what it means to be human in the very moment one is acting
as a Jew.
The interesting thing is that we come up here, in a different way,
against the problem of a thirst. In order for the intellect to take a certain
path, there must be a prior desire. How is this prior desire to come
about? It cant be artificially manufactured. Perhaps what Levinas said
about the prestige of Western knowledge as lending authority to the
initial entry into Jewish sources needs to be reversed, in communities in
which intellectual prestige is tied to halachic expertise. That is, if people
very well versed in halachic thinking were also to engage in philosophic
enquiry, as part of the very process of halachic interpretation, the rest of
the community might at least learn to appreciate the approach.
To have focused first on the Jewish community least addressed by
Levinas does not mean, of course, that Levinass method poses no
problems or questions to the community that he does, in fact, address.
I can imagine, even were his premises to be accepted, the difficulties a
Jewish day school principal might have in finding teachers sufficiently
learned in both philosophy and Jewish sources to teach in the tradition
of Levinas.
It seems clear to me, however, that Levinas intends his method to be
mostly a matter of higher Jewish education, that is, post-high school,
although high school instruction cannot operate as though it came from
a totally different universe. His claim was that the students, even if the
goal would be simply to give them literacy in the classical sources,
would change their attitude toward them, if they perceived them to be
approached a certain way by a significant body of adults around them.
The question, then, would be how to think of a higher Jewish education,
that is, university studies.
The implications of Levinass thoughts on education for Jewish Studies
are, as I see them, threefold. In the first place, the formation of graduates
in this field must include the ability to confront Jewish sources with
Western philosophical ones (philosophy understood in a broad sense),
129
with Western trends of thought (or non-Western, for that matter). The
principle to be followed is that the sources need to be translated into a
language that situates them in a broader conversation, even if the positions
thus translated are not in harmony with other voices. A formation like
this is more a question of teaching a method of asking questions than a
question of requiring parallel courses in philosophy and Jewish sources.
The second prong of graduate training should be grounding in classical
Jewish texts, not just medieval or modern, a grounding that has to be
regularly returned to, through continued study. It would indeed be highly
beneficial to have funds allotted to Jewish Studies chairs or programs
also include an allocation for this sort of activity periodic immersion
in rabbinic texts, in this or that center of study. The principle would
be that no matter what ones period of specialization, one would have
continuous contact with the formative thought of the tradition, setting
ones work in a Jewish context.
Thirdly, I am not aware, in the case of the United States, of a conference
similar to the one Levinas helped to found in Paris. There are academic
meetings in Jewish Studies, but these follow the typical university pattern
of bringing together a number of specializations. Some of the talks at
such conferences do position Jewish sources against current problems,
but this is not the focus of the conference as a whole. Would it not be
desirable to create a body, meeting periodically, whose purpose it would
be to address some burning public issue on the basis of various expertises
tied to Jewish texts?
My sense about Jewish Studies in the United States is that they follow
the patterns of specialization of the university at large. Thus, if one is
trained in Aramaic, there it stays or, if one is trained in Gersonides, there
it stays. The same goes for the modern period. All of the above measures
have to do with connecting expertise to larger issues, in a context that
would require a movement between Jewish and non-Jewish sources.
Is this possible? If one builds even one Jewish Studies program on the
basis of these principles, I would consider this a major success. Ideas,
made concrete, have feet.

Aronowicz, A (1999) Levinas Judaismo

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Aronowicz, A (1999) Levinas Judaismo

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

0

Jewish Education in the Thought of

In my foray into Emmanuel Levinass thought as it relates to Jewish

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

intellectual climate in which Jews currently find themselves.4 There are

derive from the Christian calendar. The landscapes are, as if naturally,

DL 1, pp. 267, 289, 292.

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

analysis any kind of simplistic determinism, contending that political

DL 1, pp. 2734, 290291, 295, 306, 319.

equal proportion as the Diaspora is in need of Israel.13 Once again, for

DL 1, pp. 3068, 317.

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

Implicit in this description of the role of the intellect is that the

DL 1, p. 274, 285, 31213.

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

place in a Europe christianized for over fifteen centuries, Judaism

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

Levinas might also be saying in this passage, as he says elsewhere, that

is thinking of many other horrors as well.36 One enters Jewish sources,

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

the Talmud, he claims, that we come across that extraordinary protection

the focus is on the nature of forgiveness. But, while his interpretation

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

collected annals of the yearly conferences, that the participants reflect a

while in many respects in continuity with this project, also turns it

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

In a world which viewed ritual practice as an anachronism, Levinas is

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

persistent, life-long study, he is giving back to the Jewish sources some

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

It is their refusal to accept the suffering of others as somehow justified

this obligation, he refers to it, in the very end, as the impossibility of

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

following, then, my son, to regain your freedom, since you have

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

Levinas himself does generalize, expose in a Western, sequential logic,

that a concrete image or reference functions in such a way that it can

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

tradition, in order to derive meaning either from Bible or Talmud for

He believes in the universal. An individual against an individual has no

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

been submerged by other voices. Nearly half a century later, neither

point of reference, I cannot help thinking that it would be salutary to

Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

You might also like