Faith to Faith or Person to Person? Contrasting Visions of Interfaith Relations

COVENANT AND WORLD RELIGIONS: IRVING GREENBERG, JONATHAN SACKS, AND THE QUEST FOR ORTHODOX PLURALISM. By Alon Goshen-Gottstein. London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2023. Pp. xiv + 476. Cloth, £40.00. This book is a study of the interfaith attitudes of two important twentieth and twenty-first-century Jewish thinkers: Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. The book, though, would have been improved if it had only been about R. Sacks. Goshen-Gottstein makes some new and important, if contestable, observations about R. Sacks' interfaith thought. In contrast, he does not add much to our understanding of R. Greenberg and is unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade us that R. Greenberg and R. Sacks are intellectually connected to any significant extent. Nevertheless, we must take the book as we find it and understand what the author is trying to do. Goshen-Gottstein takes the reader through a journey, first seeing the similarities and then the differences between the two thinkers, and then argues that there is still more that they have fundamentally in common. What are the similarities? Both R. Greenberg and R. Sacks are Modern Orthodox rabbis with a deep interest in understanding and developing relationships with people of other faiths. They both stirred up controversy with their views, specifically the types of pluralism they propounded. They both wrote essential works on interfaith understanding and took part in meetings with leaders of different religious traditions. Goshen-Gottstein concedes that there are also significant differences in their ideas and how they conducted their rabbinic careers. R. Greenberg began within the mainstream of Modern Orthodoxy, associated broadly with Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik and Yeshiva University. Over the years, his increasingly radical positions made him an outlier in the Modern Orthodox community, a position which he was prepared to accept as the price for espousing his views on Judaism and the appropriate Jewish view of Christianity. For many Orthodox Jews, the most controversial views R. Greenberg developed included the idea that the Jewish covenant with God became voluntary after the Shoah, giving Jesus some place or standing as a type of Messiah, and even of the Christian idea of the Incarnation. Goshen-Gottstein argues convincingly that R. Greenberg has been painted as more radical in these areas than he actually is, but even so, his ideas are far from mainstream within Modern Orthodoxy. R. Sacks might seem to belong in a similar category. His 2002 book The Dignity of Difference famously suggested that God not only speaks to non-Jews but does so through religions other than Judaism. That attracted a lot of criticism from traditional Orthodox voices, and R. Sacks issued a revised edition in 2003, together with a document of 117 pages clarifying his position. It is important to note that R. Sacks never conceded he changed his position, only that he needed to be more careful about its expression. For a time, it seemed as though R. Sacks' position in Orthodoxy was tenuous, however, for the last twenty years of his life, he thoroughly rebuilt that standing through the latter part of his Chief Rabbinate, his post-Chief Rabbinate association with Yeshiva University and the Koren Press, and his extensive writings, videos, and in-person speeches and lectures. The result was that at the time of his passing, R. Sacks was not only the leading Jewish and rabbinic voice in the world but the primary spokesperson for Modern Orthodoxy and the most high-profile Orthodox rabbi in the world. This is a far cry from R. Greenberg's denominational positioning. For all of these differences, Goshen-Gottstein argues that in the concept of Covenant, these two thinkers converge again. Both R. Greenberg and R. Sacks were preoccupied with Covenant. For R. Greenberg, Covenant is the link between the other two pillars of human history, Creation and Redemption, and drives progress from one to the other. For R. Greenberg, Covenant is connected to partnership between humanity and God and the push towards tikkun olam, the perfecting of the world. As such, it is not only for Jews but for all people. The Jewish Covenant is, therefore, not exclusive but a model for other religions to have their own Covenant. R. Greenberg has not been entirely clear about how these non-Jewish Covenants work, as Goshen-Gottstein explains, and how they relate to the Jewish Covenant, and he even argues that taken as a whole, R. Greenberg's theology of other religions could be formulated without incorporating discussions of Covenant. Nevertheless, R. Greenberg expresses himself in terms of Covenant, making him, in Goshen-Gottstein's words, “a covenantal thinker.” R. Sacks also grounds his religious ideas in Covenant. It is not incidental that his series of essays on the weekly Torah portion was called Covenant and Conversation. He saw all human relationships with God as standing on the Covenant with Noah after the Flood and the Jewish relationship as based on the Covenants made with Abraham and with the Israelites at the Exodus and at Sinai. He saw a positive future as one based on Covenant between communities and within societies, which establishes mutual responsibilities and generates better outcomes for all. R. Sacks engaged with R. Greenberg on the issue of Covenant. In his Holocaust theology, R. Sacks addressed and rejected R. Greenberg's approach. Indeed, he ultimately rejected R. Greenberg as a representative of Orthodox Judaism entirely. When he tackled possible Jewish approaches to other religions, principally in The Dignity of Difference, R. Sacks did not rely on the idea of new Covenants with different religions. In his view, there is a Noahide Covenant with all people as well as the specifically Jewish Covenants, so the concept of Covenant is a backdrop, rather than a working part, of R. Sacks' approach to other faiths. Therefore, while Covenant matters very much to both R. Greenberg and R. Sacks, it is not essential to either of their views of other religions. That being the case, Covenant cannot be a concept that brings them together despite their many differences, which Goshen-Gottstein himself sets out in chapter fifteen of this book. This raises the question as to why R. Greenberg and R. Sacks are being treated in the same book at all, especially as they are given significantly different levels of attention. R. Sacks receives almost double the number of pages as R. Greenberg, and the more original and striking work in the book is done exploring R. Sacks. The reasons for this are set out in Goshen-Gottstein's “Preface,” where he tells us how this book developed. Goshen-Gottstein is a longstanding student and admirer of R. Greenberg, although he also remains a perceptive and insightful critic of R. Greenberg's work and its limitations. He has clearly thought long and hard about R. Greenberg's views. He wrote a chapter on R. Greenberg's attitude to Christianity in a festschrift for R. Greenberg but had more material than could fit into that chapter. Goshen-Gottstein has also written two essays on Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was heavily involved with interfaith thought and work. Finally, Goshen-Gottstein gave a paper at Yale University on Dignity of Difference, especially comparing its two versions. As he had worked on all three of these thinkers, Goshen-Gottstein decided to write a book presenting and comparing their interfaith approaches. However, as Goshen-Gottstein read more deeply into R. Sacks' work, that element of the project grew until R. Heschel had to be dropped entirely, and even R. Greenberg received less attention than R. Sacks in the final version. This matters because it reveals that this volume changed its scope as it developed but did not come to a satisfactory final form. It would have been a stronger book if Goshen-Gottstein had put aside R. Greenberg and R. Heschel, and written about R. Sacks alone. It is a shame that Goshen-Gottstein chose not to do so because the attempt to show important commonalities between R Greenberg and R. Sacks does not persuade in the end. On the other hand, Goshen-Gottstein has some very interesting observations to make about R. Sacks, which deserve their own book. Perhaps the most startling of Goshen-Gottstein's claims about R. Sacks is that he was not a theologian. Instead, he describes R. Sacks as a “social thinker” who was concerned with the well-being of society and its moral development. R. Sacks, in this view, was basically uninterested in other religions in their own right. He was very concerned with expressing respect for people of other faiths and construing their personal relationship with God as real and valid but did not engage with their faiths' inner workings. Christian views of the Incarnation, for example, hold no interest for R. Sacks. This would explain why R. Sacks did not engage with interfaith dialogue; he simply was not concerned with the theological discussions that make up those dialogues. Goshen-Gottstein made his case well in terms of R. Sacks as a (non) theologian of interfaith relations. In that context, R. Sacks was indeed primarily (although, as we will see, he could not be exclusively) a social thinker. He wanted to find a way for people of multiple faiths to exist peacefully alongside each other and where each could contribute to society. R. Sacks' significant works dealing with this question do not engage theologically with other religions in themselves. The limitation of Goshen-Gottstein's argument is that R. Sacks clearly was a theologian of Judaism. Thirty years ago, a rabbinic teacher of mine made a distinction between “Dr. Sacks” and “Rabbi Jonathan.” The former, “Dr Sacks,” the Western academic, is the social thinker that Goshen-Gottstein identified, but the latter, Rabbi Jonathan, the Jewish sage who wrote the commentaries on the prayer books and of Covenant and Conversation. was at least as important. Goshen-Gottstein sees these works as outliers in R. Sack's output, but it is better to consider them as two parallel projects. They were both important to him, largely separate and occasionally intersecting. First, R. Sacks wanted to teach Judaism to Jews and did so very effectively (and let us not forget not just in published writings but in the sermons and classes that a rabbi and a Chief Rabbi spend most of their intellectual activity preparing). Secondly, R. Sacks also contributed to improving society, first British society, and as he became better known internationally, societies across the world. His interfaith thinking largely falls into the second category, but it cannot entirely because he wanted to make space for people of other faiths, not as a secularist, but as a Jew. He, therefore, had to understand followers of other religions and, to the extent necessary, those religions themselves in Jewish terms. As he wanted to embody a position of respect with the possibility of cooperation, he had to understand other religions positively, even generously. That is why there is, indisputably, Jewish theological work in Dignity of Difference, through which R. Sacks argued that Judaism could understand other religions as a medium for the voice of God (crucially without needing to engage with or analyze their individual dogmas), and members of other religious as authentic people of God. That is a theological position. Its status as a theological position is exactly why it was controversial in the Orthodox Jewish community and why the comparison between the two versions of Dignity of Difference that Goshen-Gottstein undertakes is so important to understanding R. Sacks as a theologian. Nevertheless, it is Jewish theology: how a Jew understands a non-Jewish person of faith and not an interfaith theology. That is why when Rabbi Sacks was Visiting Professor in Interfaith Studies at Oxford University in 2012, his first lecture was called “After Babel: A Jewish Theology of Interfaith” as part of a series with an equally revealing title “Making Space: A Jewish Theology of the Other.” R. Sacks' decision to avoid engaging with the theologies of other faiths themselves was not accidental or through a casual lack of interest. For example, it was a carefully thought-through position, which he articulated in his 2007 book The Home We Build Together. R. Sacks argued that “face-to-face” conversations only accentuate differences, leading to conflict. If a Jew talks to a Christian about Jesus or to a Muslim about Mohammed, they will arrive at a disagreement. But, if a Jew, Christian, and Muslim work “side by side,” they can build a better society together and build mutual esteem as members of a common social community, which exists alongside their individual religious communities. For R. Sacks, that is where the valuable work is to be done. If R. Sacks was really more interested in people of other faiths rather than those faiths themselves, we might expect him to have enjoyed closer relationships with people of other faiths, but those friendships did not really exist. Rowan Williams describes in his interview with Goshen-Gottstein, which is included verbatim in the book, how he could not really describe R. Sacks as a friend in a deep sense. Goshen-Gottstein wonders why and suggests that R. Sacks' personality held him back from engaging to the extent that the intellectual framework he created would allow and that he was less daring in practice than in theory. I think there is a different answer: R. Sacks was shy and enjoyed few close friendships across all of his relationships. The work he did with Williams and others was the work he considered important, which was to improve British society together. That can include mutual appreciation and respect but does not need to lead to an intense personal friendship. It is important that a thinker as significant as R. Sacks is given serious attention by scholars and an appropriate secondary literature is built up that appreciates and explicates all aspects of R. Sacks' intellectual projects in their full subtlety and complexity. This book is a contribution to that, but only a partial and flawed one. I hope we will see more successful efforts from Goshen-Gottstein and others.