Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought

by David Biale

The story of the origins and development of a Jewish form of secularism

Not in the Heavens traces the rise of Jewish secularism through the visionary writers and thinkers who led its development. Spanning the rich history of Judaism from the Bible to today, David Biale shows how the secular tradition these visionaries created is a uniquely Jewish one, and how the emergence of Jewish secularism was not merely a response to modernity but arose from forces long at play within Judaism itself.

Biale explores how ancient Hebrew books like Job, Song of Songs, and Esther downplay or even exclude God altogether, and how Spinoza, inspired by medieval Jewish philosophy, recast the biblical God in the role of nature and stripped the Torah of its revelatory status to instead read scripture as a historical and cultural text. Biale examines the influential Jewish thinkers who followed in Spinoza's secularizing footsteps, such as Salomon Maimon, Heinrich Heine, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. He tells the stories of those who also took their cues from medieval Jewish mysticism in their revolts against tradition, including Hayim Nahman Bialik, Gershom Scholem, and Franz Kafka. And he looks at Zionists like David Ben-Gurion and other secular political thinkers who recast Israel and the Bible in modern terms of race, nationalism, and the state.

Not in the Heavens demonstrates how these many Jewish paths to secularism were dependent, in complex and paradoxical ways, on the very religious traditions they were rejecting, and examines the legacy and meaning of Jewish secularism today.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Judaism, Religion, History, Jewish, Judaica

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a very young age I wondered what it meant that I was Jewish. When I was younger, I went to temple on high holidays and attended Hebrew School. After a short time, I got thrown out of Hebrew School (don’t ask), which lead to us going to temple less and less. Despite this total separation from the religion of Judaism, I was still a Jew (as other kids loved to point out). But why? If a Catholic person stopped going to church and didn’t believe in god, wouldn’t they no longer be Catholic? I wasn’t religious, I didn’t have a community of fellow Jews, and I times I was even embarrassed of my Jewishness; yet I was still a Jew. It’s obviously a religion, but equally obviously something more. A race? A nationality? An ethnicity? I don’t know.

In Not in the Heavens, Biale takes us on a journey from Maimonides to Spinoza to more modern day Jewish thinkers. First there are arguments over the meaning of god (a big white guy in the sky? Nature? Everything? Nothing?) and whether the bible is the word of god, a historical document, or just a book with some good (and bad) life lessons. From there, we move on to debates about how to revive Jewish culture—mainly whether or not Jews should revive Hebrew or spread Yiddish and, of course, how to look at ourselves. There’s some talk about Palestine and other fun stuff too.

This book is pretty dense and my brain has been very distracted, so I’ll end the review here. If this niche topic is something that interests you, I’d recommend reading this book. And then maybe hit me up and let’s talk about it.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Biale’s survey of Jewish secular thought is fascinating. It is wide-ranging, covering from the premodern periods into the medieval and modern eras and up through twentieth century thinkers. While Biale does bring in the various precursor traditions, most of the book, understandably, focuses on ways in which the Jewish thinkers dealt with, wrestled with, and tried to reconcile the various movements of modernity: rationalism, mysticism, nationalism, and so on. There is a way to read this book as a history of European modernity from the Jewish perspective(s). As such, much of it centers around Spinoza: his specific contributions to what becomes secular thought and also how later thinkers take and use Spinoza’s ideas for their own secularism.

The book looks at idea from philosophy, language, culture, or nationalism; and explores how Jewish thinkers responded to, innovated in, and rejected aspects of these on their paths to and through secularism. One of the themes, though not explicitly so, is that much of Jewish thought is focused on what it means be to be Jewish and to be a Jew. This takes on heightened importance in secular thought where one cannot merely point to religion, but even the religious traditions in Judaism struggle with this issue -- as evidenced in the Talmud itself. There are so many ways to be Jewish, even religiously, that this question is inescapable. And importantly, it provides the space within which secularism is born and grows.

Biale highlights key thinkers and how they deal with these issues. Some of these are more obscure, others are well known (figures such as Freud, Einstein, and Ben-Gurion). The intellectual tradition is rich and fruitful (though there are many dead ends as well). It is not a long book, though at times dense. By necessity, much is left out in order to provide the focus it needs. There are extensive notes and references for those wishing to use this as a jumping off point. I profited much from book and think it will provide a framework for future thought.