Faith, the Academic Study of Religion, and the Need for Humility

Within the university, scholars of religion generally practice what the sociologist Peter Berger has termed “methodological atheism”—putting aside their own beliefs when it come to their research, writing, and teaching. Jeffrey Woolf sees the merits, and the limits, of this approach:

As a practitioner of the academic method, I have no argument with my colleagues in biblical studies. They follow the rules and try their best to reach the truth, as best they can and as best they understand it. Furthermore, I am not arguing for a theistic approach to scholarship. In my own work, I do not write that “such and such” occurred because God willed it. . . . .

However, within the internal discourse of a faith community, there is no room for methodological atheism. . . . God is the central portion of our calculus. Secular materialism, which drives Him from the universe and beyond, is an anathema to the person of faith.

That does not mean that the findings of historians should be dismissed. Questions are valid. Doubt is a legitimate religious category. However, as with so many other matters, a person of faith must be sustained by his convictions that the historical record will ultimately confirm that which the Bible states; that the divine authorship of the Pentateuch (and inspiration of the Prophets and Hagiographa) will be confirmed; and that the tradition of the Written Law and the Oral Law also transcends the exigencies of the contexts within which they first emerged.

Read more at My Obiter Dicta

More about: Academia, Hebrew Bible, Judaic Studies, Judaism, Religion & Holidays

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society