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Professor Believes America
Is Destroying Authentic Judaism
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s the only true Judaism
an endangered Judaism?
That is the claim of
Prof. Shimon Shokek, an Is-
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raeli professor of philosophy
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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1990
and mysticism at Baltimore
Hebrew University, who
says that Jews' security in
America has produced a Ju-
daism severed from its reli-
gious and intellectual roots.
American Judaism, he said,
is bland and sterile, devoid
of spirituality. It has pro-
duced an academic disci-
pline, Judaic Studies, that
he considers to be almost a
charade and intellectuals
who teach it who are often
Hebraically illiterate.
"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 Is-
rael, he said, "helped create
an authenticity for Judaism.
This doesn't occur in Amer-
ica."
"Here," he said, "Jews
play with Judaism. Authen-
ticity will come when Amer-
ican Jews are less secure."
Recently granted tenure
at Baltimore Hebrew Univ-
ersity, where he has been
teaching since 1987, Dr.
Shokek previously taught
philosophy at Hebrew Univ-
ersity 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 in-
terpretation.
"The Talmud," he said,
"interprets the Torah and
the Mishnah interprets the
Torah. The philosophy is a
Midrash on the Midrash.
And the Kabbalah is an eso-
teric interpretation of every-
thing."
"Since first and fore-
most," said Dr. Shokek,
"Judaism is the history of
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7618 Woodward Ave.
I
Shimon Shokek: What is needed for authentic Judaism is suffering.
interpreting texts and inter-
preting their interpreta-
tions, the study of texts has
a religious value in the Jew-
ish tradition. And therefore,
the key to Judaic Studies is
the Hebrew language. But
the majority of professors
who teach Judaic Studies in
the United States don't
know Hebrew."
Dr. Shokek admittedly
has an advantage over A-
merican-born Judaic Studies
professors: Born 40 years
ago in Jerusalem (the seven-
th generation of his family
to be born there), he has
spoken Hebrew his entire
life. And he also has a con-
nection to the land of Israel
that is difficult, if not im-
possible, 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 Univ-
ersity, scolded his colleagues
because 80 percent of them
did not know Hebrew. This
has produced "an absolutely
paradoxical situation. To
teach French literature at
Johns Hopkins University,
you must know French flu-
ently. To teach Arabic at the
Hebrew University in Jeru-
salem, you must fluently
know Arabic. To teach
Greek at the Sorbonne, you
must know Greek fluently.
But to teach Judaism in
most universities in the Uni-
ted States, it is only suffi-
cient that you be the son of a
Jewish mother."
(Shokek stressed that the
Baltimore Hebrew Universi-
ty emphasizes the study of
Hebrew.)
All this creates, said Dr.
Shokek, both a
"misunderstanding and
misteaching" of Judaism
and a frequent focus on
issues that he considers pe-
ripheral 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.
"These," he said, "may be
relevant to modern life, but
they are not Judaism. The
professors have put
Maimonides on the shelf."
By attempting to make
itself more "relevant" and
less spiritual, Dr. Shokek
said Judaism in America has
distanced itself from the
Biblical prophets' mandate
for the Jews.
"The prophets," he said,
"spoke of the Jewish nation
as the depository of a meta-