The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People by David NovakReview by: Allan ArkushAJS Review, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1997), pp. 129-132Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486880 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 129

development which sees it as a progression from a philosophical position to an anti-philosophical, rabbinic position committed to the view that no road leads from Athens to Jerusalem. But in questioning such a developmental scheme, one can begin to understand and appreciate the (purported) foundational stage, as well as the very order in which speakers and their respective positions are presented, as nothing but a literary artifice against which Halevi can effectively present the truth as he perceives it. In brief, the Kuzari is art, not autobiography. And the tip-off is the aforementioned asymmetry between the actual order of its composition and the final text we have before us. If in fact the Kuzari started out as a rabbinic critique of Karaism, then we might well suppose that this represents the terminus a quo of Halevi's intellectual life, one superseded (or perhaps better, amplified) by the (further) rabbinic critique of Aristotelianism. Such a story of Halevi's intellectual development is credible, for its plausibility does not depend upon a period for which we have no evidence, and it also has the virtue of allowing the historical composition of the work, rather than the artfulness of the final product, to dictate the course of Halevi's intellectual development.

Daniel H. Frank University of Kentucky Lexington, Ky.

David Novak. The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xv, 285 pp.

In this wide-ranging, deeply learned, and carefully argued book, David Novak aims both to elucidate the doctrine of the election of Israel and to "explicate its truth for our time." The very first tasks necessitated by this agenda are, according to Novak, a confrontation with Spinoza's "radical inversion" of the traditional meaning of this doctrine and an "overcoming" of it. In this setting of priorities, Novak is reminiscent of no one so much as Leo Strauss, one of his own early teachers and a thinker whose views on matters Jewish have for a long time continued to concern him.

Novak echoes Strauss not only in his identification of the principal opponent with whom modern Jewish thought must grapple but also in his dismissal of many prior attempts to meet this archenemy's challenge as being, at bottom, too deeply compromised by their concessions to him. Like Strauss, Novak believes that an intellectually coherent overcoming of Spinoza must

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130 BOOK REVIEWS

involve the unqualified reaffirmation of the truth of divine revelation. Where he refuses to follow Strauss, however, is down the road to Maimonides. Opposed for quite cogent reasons to such a move (see pp. 237-240), Novak chooses a different path, one that is arguably just as rationalist even though it hews more closely to both the letter and the spirit of biblical and rabbinic texts. This path leads to a theology of election that is noteworthy for its high degree of success in reconciling what its author regards as the claims of reason and revelation. Whether Novak has really demonstrated that this teaching is also as morally efficacious as he wishes it to be is the question with which The Election of Israel ultimately leaves us.

As Novak shows, Spinoza's inversion of the doctrine of election proceeds from the denial of divine revelation to the identification of "the covenant presented in the Bible as an essentially human device designed by the Jews to relate their society properly to God and to each other" (p. 42). Spinoza thus replaces the God who elects Israel with an Israel who elected God. In this he is followed, in Novak's opinion, by all too many subsequent Jewish thinkers. Even Hermann Cohen, for all his opposition to Spinoza's depiction of Judaism, agrees with him on this point. It is only in the thought of Franz Rosenzweig, according to Novak, that a productive turning point is reached. Where Strauss had faulted Rosenzweig for his unwillingness to turn his back on the Enlightenment and to go all the way in his "teshubah," Novak expresses his gratitude to him for having done the philosophical work that overcomes Spinoza's attack on revelation and thereby paves "a good part of the way" toward the "retrieval of the biblical doctrine" of election.

Novak's own work represents anything but a "simple return to biblical theology." He worries, in particular, that an unphilosophic retrieval of the biblical doctrine of election "will inevitably present it as some form of tribalism or chauvinism" (p. 78). This is a hazard he seeks to avoid through a treatment of the doctrine of election that begins by "appropriating the worldliness of rationalist philosophy and the theology based on it and then overcoming it by constituting a more theologically cogent worldliness of its own" (p. 111). In carrying out this program he has recourse to a Bible understood not in isolation from any traditional interpretation but by means of "a reaffirmation of Pharisaism," i.e., through reading it in the light of rabbinic exegesis. This important aspect of his theological endeavor requires, as Novak accurately observes, yet another kind of overcoming of Spinoza, the nature of which he does not fully elucidate before proceeding as if it has already been accomplished.

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BOOK REVIEWS 131

What Novak derives from traditional Judaism is a doctrine of election that does not lose sight "of the factor of the world's relation to God" (p. 111). This doctrine connects Abraham's acceptance of God's election with his desire "to imitate in microcosm the way God relates to the whole world in macrocosm." As a result of being "known-and-chosen by God," Abraham is "concerned with the earth and especially with all the peoples in it." What matters to him "is that mishpat be done." And the fact that this is his concern is evidence of his tsedaqah (p. 136). Thus Abraham is, and Israel should subsequently be, morally involved with the rest of the world. Beyond this, however, election entails a "covenantal intimacy" with God that is not shared (in premessianic times, at any rate) with the rest of the world, a relationship that is entirely embodied in cultic acts that are performed only by Israel, and that provides, in addition, the ultimate (but not the indispensable) justification for morality. This doctrine of election, according to Novak,

removes the temptation of chauvinism. It does not say that Israel is somehow more human than anyone else. It does not place Israel above the nations of the world in any area of purely human interaction. It says that Israel's election is an intimate matter between her and God. By not reducing the entire Torah to this relationship, but rather by emphasizing its universal aspects as well, the doctrine of election enables Jews to function as equals with non-Jews in those areas where common human issues of peace, justice and righteousness are at stake between them.

(pp. 254-255)

The doctrine of election, thus understood, evidently supplies the theo- logical underpinnings for the kind of ecumenical endeavors in which Novak himself has been actively engaged for many years. It is difficult to see, however, why it could not likewise furnish the basis for a much more reclusive Jewish attitude toward the outside world, or even for something perilously close to the kind of chauvinism that Novak so strongly deplores. Employing a minimalist understanding of the requirements of tsedaqah and mishpat, someone who is otherwise in complete accord with Novak's theology of election might still consider himself to be under no obligation to be more than tangentially engaged with the non-Jewish world. And, under certain circumstances, a person who adheres to something akin to Novak's understanding of Israel's intimacy with God might draw dangerous conclusions from it.

The limitations on the utility of Novak's theology as a remedy for

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132 BOOK REVIEWS

chauvinism become particularly apparent when one considers its possible implications for the area in which such chauvinism is most likely to manifest itself, i.e., the land of Israel. This is a territory about which Novak has relatively little to say in The Election of srael, which is rather surprising, in view of the fact that the land is, as he notes, "at the same time as Abraham's election itself elected to be the homeland, the dwelling place of his people," where "the most complete dwelling-together of God and his people" will take place (p. 134). One need not, of course, resort to one's imagination in order to visualize people who conclude, with significant halakhic support, that this special character of the land of Israel makes it inappropriate for "Jews to function as equals with non-Jews" in the Jewish polity established on its soil. And while Novak himself has elsewhere expressed his principled opposition to any such line of reasoning,' it cannot be said that his theology of election, by itself, suffices to cut out the ground from beneath it.

It may be too much, then, to claim that the argument of The Election of Israel "removes" the temptation of chauvinism. Yet it certainly provides the foundation for an attractive alternative to it. It is not unreasonable to hope that in the years ahead this alternative will obtain a better hearing than the options with which it will no doubt remain in competition.

Allan Arkush State University of New York Binghamton, N.Y.

Marc A. Weiner. Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. xv, 439 pp.

What does antisemitic music sound like? According to Marc A. Weiner, "Nineteenth-century audiences were sensitive and receptive to the racist implications of Wagner's musical material for the Nibelungs" (p. 140). And what, exactly, were there audiences sensitive to? Weiner explains, "The 'hissing and gurgling' of Jewish speech that Wagner emphasizes in 'Das Judentum in der Musik' is discernible in the violent interlocution of the Nibelungs in large part because much of their exchange is set to a staccato and dissonant music in the upper half of their vocal registers" (ibid.).

Weiner is careful to specify "nineteenth-century audiences." Without an extramusical context, music can have no meaning other than an aesthetic

1. See, in particular, his Jewish Social Ethics (New York, 1992), pp. 187-205.

Marc A. Weiner. Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. xv, 439 pp.

What does antisemitic music sound like? According to Marc A. Weiner, "Nineteenth-century audiences were sensitive and receptive to the racist implications of Wagner's musical material for the Nibelungs" (p. 140). And what, exactly, were there audiences sensitive to? Weiner explains, "The 'hissing and gurgling' of Jewish speech that Wagner emphasizes in 'Das Judentum in der Musik' is discernible in the violent interlocution of the Nibelungs in large part because much of their exchange is set to a staccato and dissonant music in the upper half of their vocal registers" (ibid.).

Weiner is careful to specify "nineteenth-century audiences." Without an extramusical context, music can have no meaning other than an aesthetic

1. See, in particular, his Jewish Social Ethics (New York, 1992), pp. 187-205.

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