Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 12, 2022

By Rabbi Dr. Dov LernerStraus Center Clinical Assistant Professor

On Wednesday, April 13, the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought hosted Dr. Abraham Socher, professor emeritus of Jewish studies and religion at Oberlin College, editor of theJewish Review of Books, and author of the recently publishedLiberal and Illiberal Arts: Essays (Mostly Jewish), in conversation with Straus Center Clinical Assistant Professor Rabbi Dr. Dov Lerner. The presentation was delivered in Rabbi Dr. Lerners Thought of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks course, which is being offered at Yeshiva College in collaboration with the Straus Center. The two discussed the feisty exchange between Rabbi Sacks and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the latter having reviewed Sacks 2017 book,Not in Gods Name, in the pages of Sochers publication.

Rabbi Riskin, a leading Religious-Zionist and founder of the city ofEfrat, accused Rabbi Sacks of seemingly embracing diaspora as an ideal and depicting powerlessness as a central tenet of Jewish aspiration. Rabbi Sacks vehemently defended his work, charging Rabbi Riskin with a misreading of Maimonidean proportionsto which Rabbi Riskin responded with a reiteration of the claims that he felt that Rabbi Sacks had failed to counter.

Abraham himself, the man revered by 2.4 billion Christians, 1.6 billion Muslims and 13 million Jews, ruled no empire, commanded no army, conquered no territory, performed no miracles and delivered no prophecies, Rabbi Sacks wrote inNot in Godsname.

At the center of their debate lay the role and character of the Jewish stateboth as incarnated in the modern State of Israel and any embodiment of Jewish political power. Rabbi Riskin censured Rabbi Sacks for portraying an anemic Abraham, and Rabbi Sacks suggested that Rabbi Riskin was willfully overlooking the toxic blend of religion and power.

Why does Sacks feel compelled to describe such an anemic Abraham? Rabbi Riskin wrote. Although Moses Maimonides once described the patriarch as a weak philosophical preacher, this was precisely to underline the ultimate necessity of political action and power.

Over the course of the semester, the students related to Rabbi Sacks thought in the realms of theology, ethics, and political theory. Hearing Dr. Socher engage their instructor on matters that intersected with all three brought their studies to life in ways that promised to make the rest of the semester that much more edifying.

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Debating Great Jewish Writers and Thinkers - Yeshiva University News - Yu News

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