Other articles from this issue | Version in English | Version in French

Judaism and Secularization
Augusto Segre

General Concepts

The word « secularization » is interpreted in different ways. Saeculum is compared to the Greek aion and mundus to cosmos, the first pair being given a temporal and the second a spatial sense. Cox says:

For the Greeks, the world was a place, a location. Happenings of interest could occur within the world, but nothing significant ever happened to the world. There was no such thing as world history. For the Hebrews, on the other hand, the world was essentially history, a series of events beginning with creation and heading toward a consummation. Thus the Greeks perceived existence spatially; the Hebrews perceived it temporally. The tension between the two has plagued Christian theology since its outset.1

Some writers speak of the « secular » as something vaguely inferior, contrasting « this world » which is subject to change to the eternal « religious world », and the question is raised of the place and function of faith in the secular world. « Secularization » is thus seen as the disappearance of all religious determination from cultural integration, as an historical process whereby society and culture are liberated from the bondage of religious control because the world seems to have reached maturity and no longer to need religion. In other words, as De Rosasays in a recent publication,' secularization is the affirmation of worldly and « secular » values and of their autonomy from God and the Christian religion, fruit and result of an historic process of struggle between « religion », which was trying to maintain its control on the world, and the « world » which was trying to become autonomous in regard to religion. Nowadays, there are those who see a relation between « secularization » and « desacralization », but there is debate as to whether « sacred » should or should not be identified with « religious ». Their analysis of secularization goes back to the thirteenth century, the initial period according to certain authors of the « spirit of laicism » which was at the origin of the conflict between Church and State. On the other hand, there are those who speak of « secularism » as an ideology, a new, closed world-view, with functions very similar to those of a new religion. Finally it is asked whether secularization means not needing faith or whether, on the contrary, it heightens the necessity of a deeper and purer faith. Does this phenomenon have roots in the past or is it formally something new? What are its characteristics and its perspectives for the future?

These and similar definitions, questions, uncertainties and sometimes even confusions, give me the impression that this phenomenon has provoked a state of profound uneasiness and disquieting anxiety among scholars and the man-in-the-street. Modern analysis is now concerned with the great urban centres, the « technopolis » of producers and consumers, where anonymity reigns supreme, where there is a lack of communication, all of which seem to take on macroscopic and disturbing proportions.

What does Judaism have to say in answer to this problem? How can one define and judge this phenomenon? Does Judaism, ever ancient, ever new, have any solutions to suggest?

I feel that it is necessary at this point to give certain precisions about some fundamental concepts of Jewish ideology at least in a very general way, which, even though they may try the reader's patience, will facilitate the examination of the question we are treating here. In this way we shall see that the title which was proposed to me — « Judaism and Secularization » — is perhaps not the most precise.*

I shall say at once that I am well aware of the difficulties of the problem and in particular of the fact that the world is again involved in the effort — in my opinion, a daring one — of finding terminological precision for certain words. I would be inclined to say that outside Judaism there has always been and still is — if you will pardon the expression — a continual swing of the pendulum between « sacred » and « profane », between « matter » and « spirit ». This pendular movement, which I think can be seen in a pluralistic world, inevitably leads to an endless search for detailed and subtle distinctions, typical of the Hellenistic world which influenced Christianity when it abandoned Jerusalem and turned to Rome, making a long stop-over in Athens. The Hebrew idea, on the other hand, as I shall attempt to show, this idea born of divine teaching and realized through the Torah (Law) and the teaching of the prophets, has — in the words of Dante Lattes — « a very simple and clear idea of the world with God at its centre: God who is One, Creator of the universe, a spirit active and infinite, symbol and custodian of the highest moral good and of perfect justice ».3

I want to ask a question — first of myself and then of you; perhaps we shall find the answer along the way. Faced with the barrage of problems raised in an effort to define secularization, I cannot help thinking of the well-known phrase of Ecclesiastes: « En kol hadash tahathhashamesh: There is nothing new under the sun » (Eccles. 1: 9). I am wondering whether this affirmation is not true also concerning the phenomenon we are studying. If we understand by « secularization » the loss of so-called religious values, I think we can say that in this case too the maxim of the ancient sage is valid, for we are experiencing in our day — with a pagan sense of exaltation — the marvelous discoveries of modern technology which has spurred man on to travel the unknown realms of outer space, a new Ulysses going beyond the heavenly pillars of Hercules, while on the other hand human suffering remains great, perhaps even more so than before. Man continues his feverish search for a happiness which continually slips out of his grasp and which, indeed, the most perfect technology seems to render more elusive while giving the impression that it is almost within reach. The great problems of humanity remain: illness, inequalities between races and classes, scandalous wealth and frightening poverty, hunger, injustice, the most appalling vices and frightful crimes. Today, and perhaps even more so than in earlier times, we can say with Isaiah that there are those — and they are far from few — who call « good evil and evil good », who « change the bitter into the sweet and the sweet into the bitter » (Is.5: 20). Now if all this is the fruit of secularization, what was the world like before this secularization, at a time when it is to be presumed that religious values had not been rejected? In other words, is all the evil which surrounds us simply the fruit of this dangerous secularization, or is it rather the result of a situation having extremely ancient roots and which also concerns religion — which is still not up to the high task entrusted to it? Is there, or is there not, anything new under the sun? Can we also say with Qoheleth (Eccles. 1:18) that the man « who adds to knowledge adds to suffering »? But is even that really new? Perhaps it is, and partly because our wisdom today has evolved to such an extent that it can make us experience the old and new forms of suffering in all their acuteness. One thing is certain and remains valid for everyone: as regards collective and private morality, human society is still anchored to the schemas of many centuries ago for the simple reason that the human problem is a moral problem which has not yet been solved. What has been the contribution of science or of the religions to solving it?

These disturbing questions have led me to examine our problem from a wider point of view, trying to situate it in the vast span of human history, of human hopes and suffering, to try, in other words, to give a unified view of the whole problem. This corresponds very well to the unified view which is so typically Hebrew. In the case in point, I am able to understand « today » if I keep yesterday, the past, in my mind and if I try to build tomorrow, the future. « Today » is a simple passage, which disappears more rapidly than the human mind can imagine.

At this point, however, I must try to explain, even if only in the broadest outline, as I mentioned at the beginning, some fundamental concepts of Judaism. As we shall see, these concepts will help us to clarify many things, including our present topic.

1. Unity: Unity of God and therefore unity among men in the unity of God

This concept of unity includes all the elements which are part of the so-called material andspiritual life of man, bound together and firmly united in a continual passage from plurality to unity. Spirit and matter complete each other without interruptions, contrasts or compromise. This happens because « Israel . . . sees the one God as the source of all phenomena. She understood him as the one Creator and Lord of the worlds, and made him man's model and goal, the father of all beings, who cannot be represented by any figure. This is the greatest, the only definitive revolution carried out in human history .»4 « This is the reason why », according to Dubnow, « in the so-called Mosaic system, the ethico-religious and socio-political systems are so closely intertwined. Mosaic doctrine impels to action; it always demands an active, and not merely a passive, morality. » 5

People in authoritative religious circles today are talking about a legitimate autonomy of earthly realities; in other words, the Church would no longer claim to have direct power over the world (potestas directa in temporalibus) as was claimed in the Middle Ages. This would also mean that the « world », the « earthly », has its own consistency, a dimension of its own. Immediately afterwards, however, it is clear that the autonomy is not absolute in that, it is added, it must be in conformity with a higher will. It is also maintained that Christianity is essentially theocentric whereas secularization is essentially anthropocentric: that Christianity tends to transcendence and secularization to immanence.' And this, in my opinion, inevitably falls back into the pendular movement about which we talked earlier.

« Life », writes Dante Lattes, « is an act, not a renunciation. Judaism has never struggled with that tragically insuperable dualism which springs from denying the world and yet at the same time being forced to affirm it inasmuch as we live in it and cannot do without it. Those religions which have fallen into this dualism either deny themselves, affirming the message that a new world already exists, that salvation has already been accomplished, and live among men, seeing in life and the world a value which at one point they denied (thus reaffirming the values of the Jewish spirit and following ways indicated by the millenial experience of Israel), or else they persist in their condemnation of the world and then they have to continue to abandon the present world to the storm of paganism which is enveloping it » (op. cit.).

In short, it seems to me that in any discussion of secularization it is necessary to keep in mind that authentic and traditional Judaism has never been influenced by that gnostic dualism which opposes the divine and the human planes, denies the second in function of the first and thus leads to a complete sacralization in regard to God and a complete secularization in regard to the world. In Judaism, as we have seen, there is no incompatibility between these two terms because the world is a work created by God to carry out in time the plan of his Covenant.

2. The sacred and the profane

De Rosa maintains that secularization is a period of crisis of the sacred or an eclipse of the sacred and of God. One wonders: what is in crisis? The sacred or religion? The difference between sacred (dedicated to God) and profane (pro-fano, «outside the temple », and therefore in no way related to the sacred) does not exist in Judaism.

In Hebrew we have the word kadosh which is usually translated as « holy », but this is not an exact translation. The root of this word means « to be distinguished from », « to separate », « to be separated ». In the Bible the Lord often renews this invitation to be set apart. « You will be kedoshim (set apart) », he says, « because I am kadosh (set apart) » (Lev. 19:22). In Hebrew, the semantic meaning of the term « holiness » or « sanctity » necessarily excludes the dialectic, so typical of other religions, which opposes sacred and profane. In Judaism, there cannot be a people of laos, or a profane people, a « laity » which is excluded from participatingin the patrimony of holiness possessed by a sacred group. Nor is it possible for human and social structures to fall from a sacred to a profane dimension. Sanctity seen as a quality of the whole of Israel means, in the book of Leviticus, becoming aware of the plan of a covenant between the divine and the human; or, in other words, seeing the world and human actions as belonging to the development of God's history in time. It thus follows that if a Jew rejects this perspective, he does not become secularized but in fact rejects his Jewishness and its connotations which identify him. This is why I am a little unhappy about the topic which was proposed to me. Jewish teaching does not tend to make a person a saint who will be different from the profane world, but rather to strive to make the collectivity holy. Not one saint but all saints. Some of the great biblical figures such as Abraham, Moses, David or Solomon, were certainly not saints even though they did tend, with their contemporaries, to the collective conquest of holiness. They were certainly men of outstanding spiritual qualities, but they were men like ourselves. The Bible presents them as they were, with their virtues and their faults. But precisely because of this they are not set way above us, mythicized; in their very human struggles we feel them as being very close to us, and they act as both comfort and example for us. The problem is this: the world is made by the Lord; if we were to consider it as profane, something to be fled from, a temptation of the devil and a valley of tears, first of all we would be adopting a far from respectful attitude to the wonderful work of creation, and then we would fail in the task entrusted to us. The psalmist says: « The heavens are the Lord's, but the earth he has given to the children of men » (Ps. 115:16). If the Lord created this world and placed man in it, this means that man has been entrusted with a precise task. It is often much easier to flee from the world than to meet it head on and live it in its fullness as one ought. From the Jewish point of view, renouncing the world is equivalent to renouncing the Covenant with God who wants us to be, as Jews, men of action. In the Bible the Lord never asks for faith, but asks for man's action, action inspired by his commandments. Similarly, ontologically speaking, sin does not exist in itself: everything can be sacred, everything can be profane, everything can be sin, because everything depends on us, on the work of our heart and our hands. There is « sin » when man sins, behaves badly and does what he should not do, but not because man turns inevitably to sin and evil.

One of the prayers recited every morning by the Jew begins with these words: « 0 my God, the soul which you gave me is pure. » When a man does evil, from the Jewish point of view he is not being true to the pact between God and Israel, to the promises made by God and repeated so insistently in the teaching of the prophets, a teaching which remains completely faithful to the divine law. It is clear from creation and the Covenant that God is life and flux, the life and flux which become history, the history of God who makes himself known through his actions — and in that, he is an example for men — and the history of man who knows how to live fully and actively this fascinating history. This is how the Kedusha is worked out in practice in this world. It is in this way that the meeting between God and man occurs, inevitably, here in this world. God, in short, is there wherever we seek him sincerely with our whole heart and with all our work, and so we recognize him in our daily lives, hour by hour. Nothing is extraneous to this meeting between the divine and the human. Each one of us is a son of God and God clothes him with the fullness of his majesty and his fatherly love. This is how the collective Kedusha is worked out. In this way the Lord enters our homes and our hopes. One is no longer alone, there is no longer a lack of communication because a man's actions are intertwined with those of his neighbor. That is why we Jews, according to a tradition which has endured for centuries, always remember the facts of history. We do not forget it, we do not wish to forget it, because it becomes a fundamental instrument of education, of spiritual betterment, of lifting one's heart to God.

In this way, history too becomes sacred. The astounding novelty which Judaism introduced into the relations between God and man —an element that would be at least partially inherited by Christianity — is that it freed this relationship from the mythical and naturalistic, and proposed a perspective of history which is characterized by a series of signs or interventions (oth - othot), magnalia Dei, in time, with the result that man maintains his condition and dignity only to the extent that he is able to keep alive in himself the memory, zikkaron, the memorial of God's love for him and of the historic interventions which are the result of this love. To forget the past, as those in certain quarters would have us do, in the vain hope of freeing ourselves from the past — which obviously cannot be erased — would be to forget not only history and experience, but very often God himself, the Covenant, and even who we ourselves are, because we would no longer know who we are or what we want. Our mystics have rightly observed that if it is true that man needs God, and that is obvious, it is also true that God needs man. God is hesed, that is, faithfulness, stability, and therefore mercy because of the Covenant. He is the power and strength which guarantees this Covenant, and to such an extent that in spite of the punishment which man sometimes merits, there is always a sure pardon and the Covenant is always maintained. God, therefore, gives everything to man. Man has the possibility of giving. This is one of the most important and dramatic points of the whole of human history. We know that we receive everything from God, and that it is therefore up to us, with our free will, to remain faithful to the Covenant and to fulfill it as far as is humanly possible; that is what God expects from us. Reciprocal fidelity to the Covenant is expressed by the fulness of Kedusha.

3. Faith and action

Paul taught that what counts are not works, but faith, not what one does but what one believes. The Pauline teaching is based on the famous episode of Abraham, but a careful reading of the text leads to other conclusions. It is not concerned, in fact, with theological belief, has no dogmatic or confessional meaning, there is in the episode no act of faith which goes beyond or renounces the Law — Abraham had not even received the Torah (Law); it is concerned rather with a trusting certitude in the word of the Lord not about some good in a world to come, but about a reality of this world. We are referring to the famous sixth verse of the fifteenth chapter of Genesis.

In the words of Martin Buber:
the most remote times it is action, not faith, which has been of central importance for Jewish religiosity. The biblical books say little about faith and much about action. It was only in the syncretist Christianity of the West that the « faith » which is now familiar to western man became the principal element, whereas in primitive Christianity action held the central position.

It is true that in the Bible one can find neither the command to believe in God nor a Hebrew word which would correspond to « religion ». The word used today is dath. This word occurs a few times in the book of Esther but with the precise meaning of a norm of the Law. Care must also be taken with the word « believe ». « Believe », in English, means to trust », « to believe that something is true », « to think », « to consider », and in a derived sense, « to have religious faith ». One can believe today in something in which tomorrow one will no longer believe. But the sense of the divine is something intimate, rooted in us and connatural, from the very creation of the first man. So it has to be rediscovered, perhaps proved, but its existence cannot be questioned. This is why thereis no command to « believe » in God. Is there such a thing then as Jewish religion? My master Elia Artom wrote:

. . . Speaking of Judaism as a religion: this word could be equivocal if it gave the impression that Judaism as religion occupies only a part of the life of the Jew and is only an accessory to the individuality . . . If, on the other hand, by saying that Judaism is a religion it is meant that Judaism takes account of the divine, feels it and teaches that man must be obedient to God, then Judaism is not only a religion but a system which is more religious than any other; in fact it is the one system which is entirely religion because it leaves nothing outside the realm of the divine and of the discipline established by God.

The sense of the divine is connatural to man and becomes active through man's action, certainly not through a declaration of faith.

4. Two further precisions, both essential but
which, for reasons of time, I must examine
only very briefly; I hope, however, that they
help us in studying our problem: prophecy
and messianism. 10

The prophet, navi, is the man who speaks in the name of the Lord and is the authentic interpreter of his word. Lattes writes:

Prophet means: the man of truth and justice, the man of ideals and of hope, the man who is opposed to all domination and abuse, the man who prostrates himself before no human power, who kowtows neither to Pharaoh nor to David, who sees the Law and man's rights to life and liberty as above royal claims, who dreams neither of imperialism nor of violence. 10

The prophet is the implacable accuser of every form of pagan life which breaks unity with God and unity among men. He is the man who condemns the evil in his society because evil exists in as much as men behave badly. He is an implacable herald, urging on to renewal, to tthe teshuva, to what in Gospel terms is called metanoia, that renewal which concerns not just the individual but the collectivity. The prophet has a universal vision of man and facts, embracing the world as a whole; one could very well apply to the prophet what was said about Judaism in general, that for him the forest is more real than the trees, the sea than the waves, and society more real than the individual man. But this universal vision is possible by actualizing, not by abolishing, the Law of the Lord. Following the Law and putting it into practice simply mean following God's teaching. For these reasons, one cannot understand from the Jewish point of view how it can be maintained that « no one shall be justified by the works of the Law » (Gal. 2: 15-16), or how, as has also been said, the Law cannot render a man just before God because not only is it incapable of communicating life but in fact it puts man into a situation of sin and death. Let us not forget that we are talking about the Law of which Jesus said: « I have not come to abolish the Law » (Mt. 5:17), adding that not even the least of its commandments should be transgressed. There is here a perfect meeting with the world of the Pharisees where Jesus lived, by which he was taught and from which he derived his system of teaching.

As I have said elsewhere, I would like to repeat that I am aware of the great honor and responsibility of being a descendent of those great masters, the Pharisees, who shed among the peoples such a great light of wisdom, so vivid a sense of the divine and of love of one's neighbor. So I am not surprised when I hear repeated, with wearisome repetitiveness, so many absurd accusations. When I am dealing with these questions, I frequently have the impression of an artful attempt having been made to present a certain rupture between the positions of Jesus and of the Judaism of his time, attributing to him ideas which, in my opinion, could only have come into being considerably later. When I examine the relations between the cultural and ideological world of Jesus and of his contemporary Jews, I cannot help feeling that the teaching of Christianity as it is sometimes presented even today arose not with Jesus but after him. In this way the Law, which was defended by the prophets and the Pharisees and by Jesus himself, is often presented (sadly enough even nowadays) as a Law that is severe, tied to the letter of observance and denying the spirit. It is clear that the great world of pharisaic thought, so rich with divine ferment, is not known, nor is there any desire to know it. To try to explain to you my ideas about this, I would like to give you two examples from among the many which I could have chosen:

a) « You know that it is written in the Torah: he who is guilty, let him offer sacrifice and he will be pardoned. But I say to you — please note the expression — God says: let the sinner do good and he will be pardoned. »

b) « Your masters have counted up for you all the commandments of the Torah. But I say to you: the work of love is equivalent to all the precepts.

Where do we find these passages? Who is their author? Do they come from the Gospels? Are they words of Jesus? No, my friends, they are simply from the Pharisees and can be found respectively in Pesikta de Rav Kahana 158b and in Tosefta Pea 1V, 19.

And what is to be said about the way in which certain people dare to present even the Lord himself? When the Lord ( who is the same for Abraham and for Moses, for Jesus and Mahomet, for the Pharisees and the Apostles) is being presented in a Christian context, he is seen as absolute Love and Goodness par excellence, but when these same people talk about him in a Jewish context, he is presented as being a vindictive God who is to be feared. These are things which, in all honesty, I have never been able to understand. Perhaps all of this is to be linked to a certain type of secularization, which is not only a modern phenomenon — although unfortunately such thinking is still current today — but which goes back many centuries?

A brief word about messianism:

If men behave according to the line of action sketched out above, humanity will be able to reach the messianic age. According to Jewish thinking, the Messiah does not come by grace to redeem man from a sin which he has not committed but, if we want to use the word « grace », we could say that the messianic age is the grace which is in germ in the things of earth at which man has honestly toiled; it is the just reward for humanity which, pure when it came from the hands of the Lord, has once more found its unity, that is, has returned to unity in goodness, justice and peace as God wished it to be from the first day of creation. This highest good is reached by the work of all men, no one being excluded. There is an interesting hasidic tale in this regard. A certain person asked one of our masters: « Where is the Messiah? » « At the gates of Rome, » the Rabbi replied, « among the poor, the persecuted and the oppressed. » The man went to the city gates, found him and asked him: « Are you the Messiah? » « Yes, » he answered. « Well, what are you waiting for before you come? » « I am waiting for you, » the Messiah replied. Was the Messiah really waiting for him? Certainly not, but he was waiting for, and still awaits, you, you and you, everybody, all men. The messianic age becomes real when the « new heavens and the new earth » ( Is. 66: 22), which were foretold, become a reality. It is told that when Rabbi Menahem of Vitebsk was living in Israel, a certain fool climbed up the Mount of Olives and there sounded a blast on the trumpet. The news began to spread among the frightened populace that thetrumpet blast was to announce the redemption. When the Rabbi heard this, he opened the window, looked outside and said, « There's nothing new. » Judaism, as my old master Lattes comments, expects this renewal to be the result of men's work.

The messianic age will make real the Malkhuth Shamayim, the « Kingdom of Heaven », or the Malkhuth Shaddai, the « Kingdom of the Almighty ». « Heaven » is used to substitute for the word « God » (compare the English ejaculation: « Good Heavens »). Malkhuth Shamayim is of talmudic origin even though it represents a biblical and prophetic idea and is, as Lattes writes, the blessed period in which tyrants, wicked and vicious monarchs, false deities, corrupt and lying ideas, unbridled passions will no longer reign in the world of men, but God will rule with his law of justice. In one of the oldest Hebrew prayers, the Kaddish, the coming of the Kingdom of God is hailed in words which inspired Jesus himself in his prayer (Mt. 6:9-10).

Magnified and sanctified be his great Name in the world which he bath created according to his will. May he establish his kingdom during your life and during your days, and during the life of all the house of Israel, even speedily and at a near time.10a

Jesus then continues drawing his inspiration, as Klausner and more recently Robert Aron have pointed out, from his fellow-countrymen of the tannaitic period: « Hallowed be your Name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. »

Judaism and Secularization

All of these preliminary notions which were necessary to make clear certain fundamental ideas of Judaism, are also useful as guide-lines in studying our topic. We can now attempt an analysis of this secularization and try to reach some conclusions.

Today's world is what it is, with its progress, its discoveries, novelties, and also with its great doubts and complex problems. Just looking around is enough to assure us of that. But what is really new? What did not exist before?

I am not talking about the evident progress in science and technology. On the other hand, every period has marked a step forward in human progress. Every age has been, in comparison to the period that preceded it; modern and a contrast to a world become old. Now, however, we are moving more rapidly along this path. We now have the « super highways » of science on which reckless speeds can cause dangers in this field too. In my opinion, the problem today is that the world is becoming in a certain sense ever smaller. This is due to science. The different peoples are now living cheek by jowl and the danger of friction is much more acute; the different systems of life, culture and traditions are meeting each other and clashing, with greater intensity and bitterness and ever greater cruelty. After the clan, the tribe, the peoples, the nations, today we have continents, often armed against each other. The most advanced technologies and the most scientific perfidies are confronting each other. If the problem is put in these terms, if it is true that, as in the past, many elements converge to form a new civilization, it seems to me that the problem is much broader and more demanding than it would appear if we were to limit ourselves to examining it only from the one point of view ( important though it may be ), namely that of the conservation, loss or regaining of religious values sic et simpliciter. We must look at things as the Hebrew eye has always seen them, that is, from a unitary complexive point of view, taking into account everything that concerns the life of the individual and of the collectivity. Concerning the so-called material and spiritual sides of life, the social and the religious, our masters said, many centuries ago: « If there is no flour, there is no Torah (Law) ); if there is no Torah (Law) ), there is no flour » (Pirke Avoth III, 17 ). Thus they took account of elements which are strictly related to each other and interdependent. It would be an error to be concerned only about religious values, as has basically — outside the Jewish world — been the case in the past for those called religious, and these very religious values were always in danger, even when imposed by force. To make such a mistake today, when new values are making themselves felt, would be a particularly serious mistake. People are finally aware that the flour exists too, but there is no time to be lost in the task of rethinking one's categories. The great problem for man includes a religious problem but that is not the only one; the most important is a great moral problem. There are only two alternatives: if we save morality, we shall also save religion; if not, religion too will be lost. Religion, never more than nowadays, is a goal, a point of arrival, and certainly not ( and in Jewish terms never has been) a starting point.

When Abraham, in a dramatic conversation, discusses the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah with the Lord ( « Will the Judge of the earth not act justly? » exclaims Abraham [Gen. 18:25] ), the problem is not one of having given up religion, of secularization as it would be called today, but of establishing who is just or unjust, who does or does not live a moral life. The inhabitants will perish because they have elevated an immoral system of life into their law. The Lord is prepared to save not the religious man but the just man. Over and above the text itself, the midrash —which is then transmuted into the Gospel parable — recounts episodes concerning the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah which are hair-raising in their descriptions of certain styles of life which unfortunately are still found in our modern civilization.

Then there is the episode of Jonah who is sent to Ninive. Ninive is a metropolis, we would say nowadays; in fact the text tells us that it took three days to walk right across it. What does the Lord say to Jonah? Does he send him to bring back to religious practices a population which has abandoned the faith? No. The Lord says: « Their wickedness has come up before me » ( Jonah 1:2 ). The inhabitants of Ninive welcome Jonah's preaching, repent, and everybody, the text tells us, « was converted from his wicked life and from the violence which he had committed » ( Jonah 3:8). The text does not say that they became « religious ». It is normal, then, that at this point the Lord should pardon. In this case too, the inhabitants of Ninive, like those of Sodom and Gomorrah (neither group was Hebrew), had they lost the sense of religious values, had they, in other words, become secularized, in the sense that that word has nowadays? Did they, in other words, belong to a world « which had become adult, mature »? No, they had simply strayed from the path of justice which, from the Hebrew point of view, means losing the true « faith » or the true « religion ».

Some modern scholars seem to think that to become a man of this technological era, i. e. to accept all the weight of the problems of this world, is the new solution which is adapted to our times and which will make possible liberty and personality, thus opening the road which leads to God. But this is hardly a great novelty nor a sensational discovery to resolve man's problems. It is a solution which, as we saw a little while ago, giving some examples, dates from ancient times. The age of technology is a new phase, and certainly not the last, indeed just one among many, which man can follow on the road which leads him to God. Once more, what counts — and it is a problem centuries old but ever new — is that man should not commit once again the tragic error, the enormous folly, of thinking that this era, with all its ideas, weariness and hopes, is the center of the world or that it is the final and ultimate goal of humanity. Let us hope that man will not, in his folly, say once more: « Look! I have done it. I possess the truth. Nothing and nobody can now escape from my power or my control. If, to our great woe, this tragic error were repeated, we would inevitably fall even if only temporarily into a period of dictatorship, this time the dictatorship of scientific technology, just as we have passed through other forms of dictatorship ( all fatal), be they military, political or religious, and we would thus fall from the frying pan into the fire. But man, as his history stretching through millenia goes to show, was created to be free, responsible for his actions and not subject to any form of slavery. Up tillnow man has suffered much from the lack of certain physical and spiritual freedoms, which has been like a theft perpetrated against his body or his spirit. But he has always known how to pick himself up after every great trial, towards which he had often moved unconsciously, and set out once more on his way. I still have, as I always had, great faith in man and his capacity for recovery and revival. So it does not necessarily follow ipso facto that the era of technology must be dictatorial and opposed to faith.

That depends on man and not on technology. Could we say that the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1ff ) was raised as a scientific challenge against heaven? The subsequent confusion of languages, the anonymity, the impossibility of communication between people who nonetheless spoke the same language, but who became, as a result, like strangers speaking different tongues, could perhaps be seen as an enormous failure ante litteram of secularization. Isaiah, speaking of the king of Babylon says: « You said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will become the equal of the most High » (Is. 14: 13- 14 ). The Bible tells us that the builders of the tower of Babel were punished because the science of the time was united only in evil, ambition and pride, the builders having no unity of desire to construct the good and the honest. God forbid that today's scientists be inspired by the same sentiments that erroneously and tragically inspired their biblical colleagues. God forbid, because one often realizes that we could find ourselves once again in the same conditions and lose thereby not only a common language but this time perhaps the whole of 'humanity. For the « tower of Babel » nowadays can receive a variety of names: « space flights », « atomic bomb », « bacteriological warfare ».

So was Qoheleth right in affirming that « there is nothing new under the sun »? To say that man, in order to solve these spiritual problems, must find his place in the midst of the world, that is, that he must be involved in the world and not flee from it, as some- would maintain — none of this is new for us Jews. Today a certain number of Christians are discovering this, shall we say, « new » position which man must adopt. But this is precisely the position that Judaism has proclaimed for centuries, even though it has undergone, precisely because of these ideas, many inhumane persecutions at the hands of the most developed civilizations of East and West. Because of these ideas Judaism has for centuries been accused of having lost sight of the immensity of heaven ( which on the contrary it has never denied and has always kept well in mind), of being a people of materialists and tied to the letter of the Law. We know, on the contrary, that this people has managed to reach the highest spiritual values by taking what was and is the only way for man's earthly journey, and which is nowadays presented as a novelty: that is, trusting him with the full responsibility for his actions. But for us Jews, who entrust our sons with many responsibilities as soon as they reach thirteen years of age, it is an ancient truth. But attention: there are certain truths which are always valid because they come from God, and which we cannot make light of, nor can we continue to amuse ourselves with certain games which are ever more dangerous for the existence itself of the whole of humanity.

Some writers, such as Cox, maintain that secularization began at the very moment of biblical creation when man was entrusted with naming the animals, and that it continued and developed with the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt, and on the mountain-side of Sinai with the proclamation of the Law. He explains that in this way the world was freed from the myth of the gods, the one God intervened in history, and in this way direct contact was established between God and man, to whom was entrusted the responsibility for his own actions. " If secularization is understood in this way, I could accept, at least in certain points, Cox's theory, even though the problem needs to be re-examined. In this case, however, one must be completely consistent and say thattoday — and to be more precise it would be better to say, especially today — there is a grave risk of losing this precious secularization. It is indubitable that pagan ideas and myths, although in modern garb, are not so far from the old paganism, and they are bursting forth with terrific virulence, « sacralizing » the whole world in their own way. One can think of so many instances from sports to music, from politics to culture, from the theater to the cinema, that the only problem is one of limiting our examples.

In many cases, people nowadays are living in, and with the help of, myth. Amongst others, the problem of the young stands out. (Unfortunately this too is becoming a myth for the young and the not-so-young.) In my opinion it is clear that if we grant them nothing, and try to condition them to the life of the generation which preceded them, we are committing an old and serious error; it is not right, and we are doing serious harm to them and indirectly to those who will follow them. But in my humble opinion we commit just as serious an error if we grant them everything, or give ourselves and them the impression that we are granting everything. By doing this, we are betraying our and their life and their future. Life in fact consists of continual choices, and not just for the young. From the beginning of creation, Adam and Eve, the first human couple, were invited in full liberty to make choices. It is not possible even today for man to have all that he wants, and that is the lesson of that passage from Genesis. We must teach young people that that is part of the human condition; that choices then condition the life of the individual and of the group; that they must reach maturity realizing that only on the base of choices can a solid life be built, otherwise one destroys oneself, and that finally they must go into training like an athlete, if I may use the comparison, and thus prepare themselves for the fascinating game of life. Thereafter each one will choose the way he prefers, but he will have learned what is most important for a man: responsibility in choosing.

From all the elements which I have tried to explain to you, it seems clearer to me than ever that the concept of « secularization » has to be seen in rather a different light when it is applied to Judaism. That is why, at the beginning of this paper, I said that the topic which had been proposed to me did not seem altogether exact. Nevertheless, accepting the theme as it stands, what can Judaism offer as a solution to the so-called « secularization »? I think that in the course of my paper I have already outlined the possible solution. As I have already said, to those who were not familiar with it it may appear as « new », but it is centuries old, though still valid.

Even today, Judaism represents the uninterrupted continuation of the teaching of the prophets. For us, the Bible has never been a closed book and far less something that has been surpassed, nor has it become a museum piece, worthy only of the scrutiny of experts. The Bible has always been open before the careful and attentive eye of the Jew, who has known how to find in it, at every time and in every circumstance, valid teaching for the life of every day. Through the teaching of the prophets, God's voice has thus always been present in every period of history; indeed, in every period God's teaching has made history. For the Christian, Jesus' testimony comes through baptism. Our testimony goes back to Abraham. It seems to me that in the authentic preaching of the Gospel, baptism, unless I am mistaken, is only the external act, which does not save of itself but which demands a teshuva in the Hebrew sense, that is, a turning back, based on repentance, which leads man back to God and makes him new (metanoia). This explains the preaching of John, the man of the desert, who invites men to teshuva. It also explains many expressions: for instance, that baptism, which is a bath of purification — the mikveh in Hebrew —is given to adults who have « repented », « have made straight the ways of the Lord » (Mt. 3:2; Lk. 3:1-18; Jn. 1:6-8; Is. 40:3). This beautifully Hebrew concept shatters when it seems that the Church moves away from the Gospel text and makes baptism into an efficacious sacramental act,automatically giving grace, administered to babies, and connected to the so-called theme of original sin. For the post-Gospel Christian, baptism has become the vehicle of grace which opens the way to God. For the Jew, God is present in him as a natural fact. We are all sons of God because the Lord created man to his own image and likeness, and therefore the relationship God-man, man-God, is always active; but it is always a relationship that leads man to God, never a relationship which leads God to become man. Only in this way the testimony, which was born with Abraham and is reaffirmed in the Law and the prophets, is renewed from man to man, from generation to generation, without any breach of continuity. Man thus holds a powerful instrument for elevating and pushing towards unity among men, and of men in God. But for the Jew, the goal is reached in the most religious way of all: by working justly and according to the morality of the Law and the prophets. From this point of view, the Christian who loses his religious values can remain a lay Christian, but the Jew, as I have said above, if he loses his « religious » values runs a much greater risk: he disappears, because through laicization the Jew loses his identity, his self-identification.

The crisis from which the world is suffering today, even if at present it has taken an acute form, has nevertheless very ancient roots. When in fact a solution for the grave problems of mankind was sought by flight from this world, seeking salvation only in the values of the spirit, with the result that people closed their eyes to the reality of this world, at that point a very serious rupture occurred, with the renewal of that fatal dualism against which Judaism has always fought. Then when, as a reaction to this system, scientific materialism arose as a system, as the panacea for all the ills of humanity, pluralism, which is basically paganism, became more pronounced. Religious dogmatism was now faced with materialist dogmatism. Basically, although with the obvious differences, two forms of « religion », so to speak, were face to face, each of which, by concentrating on solving only one part of the problems of the human race, could only deceive itself in thinking that it was solving them all. Nowadays, perhaps, a painful effort is being made to find a modus vivendi, but it is natural to ask what is the precise goal and intention of this rapprochement. It seems that certain contacts, even if scrupulously and diplomatically controlled by both parties, are about to begin and that perhaps that could offer sufficient, even if only transitory, solutions. But is there any real possibility of agreement between dogmatic positions which are in fact so distant from each other? Agreement, that is, which could override positions that are opposed? Positions which mirror the pendular movement of which I spoke earlier, and which this time concern not only oppositions between « sacred » and « profane », « matter » and « spirit », but also between « religion » and «politics »? These are difficult positions because for the « sacred » as for the « profane », for «matter » as for « spirit », for « religion » as for «politics », the common denominator is always the same: moral unity.

For me there is a solution which can be tried, namely, a return to the ancient sources, in other words to the teaching of the prophets, valid and dynamic today as ever because it is part of the Law, which it reaffirms, and because it enters into the quick of the great human problems.

The Jews can once more be present, and usefully so, in this great assembly of the peoples. They have a great teaching and a great experience to offer. The Jewish experience has always been substantially two-fold, passing through social, historical, spiritual, cultural and political crises; the Jews have often found themselves faced with the tremendous danger — and often it has not been only a danger — of being physically annihilated, but they have also been faced with the no less grave danger of disappearing spiritually. In spite of this they have always survived, in spite of the fact that more than once it has been believed, or hoped, that the Jews were now done away with. It is difficult to say why all this has happened to the « servant of God », that is, to Israel ( Is. 41:8); certain things elude even the most expert historian and the best prepared theologian. This Jewish example, this experience of the Jews, this perennial font of inspiration which finds its source in the Bible, can all still be useful and help to bring about that metanoia, teshuva or « conversion ».

But in practice, what can be done? One must get going, act; the work must be extended to all, to every single person, in order to make this morality of justice and uprightness operative and fruitful in each individual and in the group. Moses, in a well-known passage, hopes that all will become prophets (Num. 11:29), in other words that all will become bearers, interpreters and doers of the word of the Lord. One cannot wait on events, undergo them as though some irreversible fate were hovering over humanity, and then send up laments and prayers to heaven. There is a midrash which can teach us something in this respect: Moses, disturbed and saddened by the attitude of the people in the desert who were complaining about the lack of food and drink, turns in prayer to the Lord. The Lord calls him and says: « The people lacks food and water and is complaining, and that is a normal human reaction, but what are you doing? You are annoyed and you are praying. It would be better to get up and do something!

We must realize that it is not only in those moments when we are recollected in prayer in the synagogues, churches or temples that we are close to God and God is close to us; that we are not religious only when we withdraw in prayer, each according to his own faith and tradition, in those buildings built indeed from a spirit of faith but sometimes also from a spirit of vainglory. In my opinion, we are really close to God and God is really close to us, and we are really religious, when we come out of these official places of prayer to face the world which surrounds us and to dedicate our best efforts to it, so as to build up true justice, love and morality in the world. Here in the world, the true house of prayer because built by God, we can offer with our moral work the best prayer to God, to our neighbor and to ourselves. How often, indeed, has this faith not been enclosed and isolated and thereby rendered sterile within four walls declared sacred, as if the Lord could be enclosed and limited in a structure made by human hands ( I Kings 8:27 ). There, leaving the vast world deprived of the necessary action, or rather, what is worse, ignoring, negating or fighting against it, one has waited for the faithful, ready to welcome them only when they had crossed the sacred threshold, and only there were they welcomed, and sometimes indeed humiliated. Then when the house of prayer was deserted, there were those who lamented and, dismayed, inveighed against those who had caused a « crisis » in religion. But I wonder whether, rather than there being a crisis of religion in its objective values, it is not rather a crisis of those who are called religious.

We must have the courage and honesty to go back to living our faith among people, sharing their sufferings and their hopes, actively participating in the fatigue and weariness of our neighbor, in his choices, so that each person may really assume, in deeds and not only in words, his great responsibilities. This ancient but ever new teaching of the prophets, which indicates the way to a global solution of the human problem ( which is really a moral problem), never promised paradise to the good nor threatened hell to the evildoers. Our masters have always taught us that Sekhar mitzvah, mitzvah, that the reward for duty duly accomplished is to be found in the very possibility which God gives us of carrying it out. If you permit me to offer some advice: open your Bibles again, study; but more important, put into practice the Word of God contained in his Law and reaffirmed with such solemnity and human and agonizing passion by the prophets.

The Lord says, in the words of Isaiah:

may multiply your prayers, I shall not listen. Your hands are covered with blood, wash, make yourselves clean. Take your wrongdoing out of my sight. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, help the oppressed, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us talk this over
This passage will be read next Sabbath in our synagogues.

Dear friends, we could continue to discuss at length to try to work out a definite terminology, scientific and theological, to reply more accurately to our anxious questions about secularization, using all the precision of our culture, all the profundity of our faith, all the science with which we are nowadays equipped. But the substance of it all is, and remains, in these words of Isaiah. Nothing has changed substantially: the world must be renewed morally. If we have understood this lofty teaching of the Lord, transmitted to us by Isaiah, and have really worked to bring it about, then, as Isaiah himself says, « Zion will be redeemed by justice » (Is. 1.27 ), and then, as Habakkuk says, « the country shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters swell the sea » (Hab. 2:14 ).

So this is the solution which the prophets of Judaism have always offered, and still offer today to restless humanity, in what is perhaps one of the most dramatic moments of its centuries-old history.

NOTES
1. H. Cox, The Secular City, New York, 1966, p. 16.
2. G. De Rosa, Fede Cristiana, tecnica e secolarizzazione, ed. Civilia Cattolica, Roma 1970.
3. « L'idea d'Israele, » Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 1951.
4. D. Lattes, « L'idea d'Israele, » op. cit.
5. S. Dubnow, Die judische Geschichte.
6. G. De Rosa, op. cit.
7. Lattes, Nuovo commento alla Unione Comunith israelitiche italiane, 1955-56, pp. 36-7.
8. Sette discorsi su l'Ebraismo, ed. Israel, Firenze 1923, p. 43.
9. E.S. Artom, La vitj d'Israele, Firenze, 1937, p. 3.
10. Uomini liberi e pensiero ebraico, 1907.
10a. The Authorised Prayer Book, revised edition, commentary by Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, New York, 1948, p. 423.
11. H. Cox, op. cit.

_______________
Doctor Augusto Segre is in charge of the cultural department of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities.
* This paper was originally delivered in August 1970 at the Eighth Session of Ecumenical Formation at Camaldoli.