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Franklin Savings Centre Bldg.
26400 W. 12 Mile Road
Southfield, Mich.

3 54-6 070

Prof Believes U.S. Jews
Are Too Comfortable

ARTHUR J. MAGIDA

Special to The Jewish News

I

s the only true Judaism
an endangered Judaism?
That is the claim of
Prof. Shimon Shokek, an
Israeli professor of
philosophy and mysticism at
Baltimore Hebrew Univer-
sity, who says that Jews'
security in America has pro-
duced a Judaism severed
from its religious and in-
tellectual roots.
American Judaism, he
said, is bland and sterile,
devoid of spirituality. It has
produced an academic
discipline, Judaic Studies,
that he considers to be
almost a charade and in-
tellectuals who teach it who
are often Hebraically illit-
erate.
"Judaism produced more
intellectuals than any other
religion," said Dr. Shokek,
"mostly because the texts
were a genuine source of in-
spiration. But American
Jewish intellectuals are now
divorced from these texts
and Judaism's great tradi-
tions. They have built a new
temple, one based on aliena-
tion and pragmatism, one
based on mingling with the
general American society."
"Authentic" Judaism,
implied Dr. Shokek, depends
on aggravation and in-
security. The "distress" of
Jews in exile or the stress of
living in an endangered
Israel, he said, "helped
create an authenticity for
Judaism. This doesn't occur
in America."
"Here," he said, "Jews
play with Judaism. Authen-
ticity will come when
American Jews are less
secure."
Recently granted tenure at
Baltimore Hebrew Univer-
sity, where he has been
teaching since 1987, Dr.
Shokek previously taught
philosophy at Hebrew Uni-
versity in Jerusalem.
Dr. Shokek rates fluency
in Hebrew as indispensable
for properly understanding
and teaching Judaism,
which he considers depen-
dent on texts and their
interpretation.
"The Talmud," he said,
"interprets the Torah and
the Mishnah interprets the
Torah. The philosophy is a

Arthur J. Magida is an assis-
tant editor at our sister news-
paper, the Baltimore Jewish
Times.

Midrash on the Midrash.
And the Kabbalah is an eso-
teric interpretation of every-
thing."
"Since first and foremost,"
said Dr. Shokek, "Judaism
is the history of interpreting
texts and interpreting their
interpretations, the study of
texts has a religious value in
the Jewish tradition. And
therefore, the key to. Judaic
Studies is the Hebrew lang-
uage. But the majority of
professors who teach Judaic
Studies in the United States
don't know Hebrew."
Dr. Shokek admittedly has
an advantage over Ameri-
can-born Judaic Studies pro-

"In the U.S., Jews
play with Judaism.
Authenticity will
come when
American Jews are
less secure."

fessors: Born 40 years ago in
Jerusalem (the seventh ge-
neration of his family to be
born there), he has spoken
Hebrew his entire life. And
he also has a connection to
the land of Israel that is
difficult, if not impossible,
for an American to equal.
At a national meeting two
years ago of the Association
of Jewish Studies, recalled
Dr. Shokek, Marvin Fox, a
professor at Brandeis Uni-
versity, scolded his col-
leagues because 80 percent
of them did not know Heb-
rew.
This ignorance, said Dr.
Shokek, has produced "an
absolutely paradoxical
situation. To teach French
literature at Johns Hopkins
University, you must know
French fluently. To teach
Arabic at the Hebrew Uni-
versity in Jerusalem, you
must fluently know Arabic.
To teach Greek at the Sor-
bonne, you must know
Greek fluently. But to teach
Judaism in most univer-
sities in the United States, it
is only sufficient that you be
the son of a Jewish mother."
All this creates, said Dr.
Shokek, both a
"misunderstanding and
misteaching" of Judaism
and a frequent focus on
issues that he considers
peripheral to the main body
of Judaism — studies of wo-
men in Halachah or of
homosexuality in Judaism
or Judaic interpretations of
Marx, Freud or Kafka.