by Lot Grundy

Created on: January 13, 2009

Seemingly, to answer this question one must draw the division of modern' and archaic' Judaism, saying why such a distinction was contrived. This cannot be done in any meaningful way.

As long as history allows us to see, Judaism has been divided in one way or another and now is no different. The dividing lines between Sadducee and Pharisee in the first century may have been washed away in the sacking of Jerusalem, but echoes of these can be perceived in the divisions common over the last two hundred years. Throughout this paper will run a debate on the nature of modernity that will use Judaism as its battleground. I intend to show how the divisions within Judaism are a natural result of a tradition where multiple interpretations are integral to its scripture (exemplified in the Talmud) and how that process both shaped and was shaped by modernism, rather than simply created by it.

I do not wish to underplay in any way the affect of the Enlightenment on the course of history; however, there seems to be an assumption in lay scholarship that the enlightenment affected all cultures it touched in some radical new way, as though there was a great awakening experienced by all at the same time. It is seen as the spreading of a new, perspective altering, knowledge that banished ignorance and bigotry like wild-fire over bone dry bush. This is in the case: it is not as if tradition had never been challenged before.

The Martians did not land and, disguised as serious Germans, introduce the mortals of the earth to their extra-terrestrial, existential angst; the enlightenment came out of the natural evolution of European society and was comprised of pre-existent forms of debate. Similarly, there was not a harmony within the Judaic tradition that was suddenly disturbed by maxims such as "Sapere Aude!" and the zeal of a generation freed from the bonds of ignorance by a new confidence in the faculty of reason.

After all, in the second century was there not a debate between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ismael on the nature of revealed text? Before then, drawn from Hellenistic roots, had there not been the creation of hermeneutical method that survived in rabbinic scholarship throughout the ages? Is a version of this method now seen as rather cutting-edge by scholars like Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer?

The vast haul of books retrieved from Constantinople introduced the west to ideas and arts not seen in many years. But it is my contention that what is more important is the language shift

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