Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition (Franz Rosenzweig Lecture Series) [Paperback]

Arthur Green's Radical Judaism is just what it says, Judaism returned to its roots. Typical of Green's writing is the fact that he is steeped in the classical sources of Jewish and especially kabbalistic tradition, but he is also informed by the insights of scientists and secular thinkers. For anyone who has followed his career and read his books, little between these covers will come as a surprise. Green is a Jew who wants very much to be traditional but who cannot find himself within the parameters of a traditional Jewish theology. He fully accepts evolution and a kabbalistic concept of God that sees the Almighty more as Process than as personal being, and yet he talks about God in ways that may make us think that he has an ongoing personal dialogue with the Divinity.
What draws me most to Green is his ability to be both radically traditional and radically creative as he approaches the modern world. He characterizes himself as a seeker and directs himself to seekers of all persuasions. That having been said, one can in no way doubt his own personal commitment to being a part of the Jewish people. This book is profound and challenging, and yet written in a language that anyone with a basic undergraduate education should be able to understand. I highly recommend it to all libraries frequented by religious seekers. Kudos to author and publisher for producing a book that is in every sense worthy of its topic and audience.
Daniel J. Rettberg

Arthur Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2010.

Jewish theology has gone through many a metamorphosis over roughly two thousand years since the closing of the biblical canon. It is precisely thanks to this flexibility of the Jewish theological tradition that Judaism has been able to survive many extremely critical periods in its lifespan. In responding to the many dangers Jews have had to face during the three millenia of their existence perhaps none has been as threatening as the one brought about by relatively recent scientific advances such as Darwin's theory of evolution, the insights of modern astro-physics and the Shoah, (the catastrophe also known as the Holocaust). These three have placed a huge question mark over the traditionally accepted existence of the biblical theistic God. While in the end it is true that the existence or non-existence of God cannot be proved, it can be said that, by and large, science and the non-responsiveness/absence of a God-from-beyond have put an end to the plausibility of the existence of the biblical God.
In view of most Jewish theologians' apparent fear that the survival of Judaism without the biblical God is an impossibility, they have, and this has been done a number of times before, set out once again to reinterpret the Bible God in order to enable his continued existence..
Arthur Green's book, in my opinion, is yet another such desperate attempt at rescuing the biblical God from oblivion. Although to me, as a Jewish theologian and Bible scholar, it is perfectly clear that Judaism is well able to survive and to continue making a valuable contribution to world society without the biblical God, it seems that this is not the case for Green. I shall enlarge upon my position a bit later.
It is somewhat amusing how Green repeatedly avows his non-belief in the God as depicted by the biblical writers. He makes it clear that in no way does he accept a fundamentalist reading of scripture. Historical and literary criticism do make sense to him as does also responsibly done archaeology. But a literal reading of the biblical text, what our rabbis call pshat, is not acceptable to him and for that I applaud him.
Yet, the reality of God and God's pertinence for Judaism must by all means be maintained, it seems, and so, to accomplish this, Green turns to Jewish mysticism and more particularly to Kabbalah. Because it is impossible to convey his thinking in detail here, let me just say that God, for Green, is imbedded in human conscience/soul. God resides in every person; we are all intimately God-related and therefore horizontally related to one another. This possession, human God-connected conscience, lies within everyone and is available to be tapped so as to be translated into beneficial action for the world, but not every human being is aware of the great gift that lies within each person`s self. Judaism's task/mission is to make humanity aware of this inherent gift and to challenge everyone to act upon it for the good of creation. Our world is in danger of self-destruction because of our advanced human evolutionary state which provides us with enormous powers for good or for evil. Humanity's suicide at whose brink we stand can be avoided and even reversed once all people realize that they are called to goodness by the God-within-them. It is the immanence of God and our potential awareness of it that calls us to transcend our basic biological existence which we share with all other earthly beings, animate and inanimate. The theology that Green bases himself on is the Talmud's Rabbi Ben Azzai's insistence that the most important biblical teaching is that we, humans, are created in the image of God and second, the challenge contained in God's call to Adam and Eve, (i.e., to humanity): ayekha - "where are you?"
With the exception of Green's repeated reference to Kabbalah in which he grounds his theology, there is nothing new, let alone radical, in his teaching. Much of the same is found in Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, but in both cases, minus Green`s Kabbalah mysticism. Let me, however, make it clear that all these teachers' ultimate theological thrust is wise and well worth listening to.
My final remark is this: the very same valuable thrust toward achieving a fully realized humanity is found in Spinoza's writing. By following Spinoza, one arrives there without the biblical God, as well as without the supra-rational hermetic teachings of Kabbalah. Once we take the wonder of nature in its evolutionary development which encompasses everything and everybody in the universe seriously and realize our connectedness to and total dependence on it, we arrive at the very same mandate for humanity that Green proposes, but this time on the basis of our evolutionary intellect and rationality which nature provides.

Rabbi Green strikes a good balance in this book between a scholarly and personal exploration of non-dual Judaism. He takes on topics that others would fear to go: God and Being, Evolution and the History of God, the nature of the Torah, and the meaning of Israel, both in the ancient and modern sense.

This is a great deal of ground to cover in 166 pages. But Green is deeply committed to his view of Judaism, and the path it should take in the future. I view this work, and some of his other writings, as a prologue and challenge to create a `new' and more vibrant Judaism. He wants to shift the focus of Judaism away from theism and dualism and toward panentheism and monism. He can't do this alone. He invites readers to do their own work and investigations along this unique path.