“Go to San Francisco and you’ll see the only ones fighting assimilation are the Reform rabbis.”
That’s an unusual comment coming from a yeshiva-educated Orthodox rabbi. But David Hartman is one of the most unusual Orthodox rabbis you’ll ever meet.
Hartman, an Israeli philosopher, author and theologist, used to come to the Bay Area often to deliver highly controversial and engrossing lectures and to raise money for his thriving Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem — now run by his son Donniel, also a rabbi. In the mid ’80s, Hartman was a scholar in residence at U.C. Berkeley.
He praises Reform rabbis in San Francisco because they are following his prescription and engaging congregants in discussions about the future of Judaism rather than accepting halachah (Jewish law) without questioning it or discussing it.
Now approaching 75, the rotund, admittedly angry rabbi says, “The bones are beginning to break.” But clearly the mind isn’t.
“Can I conceive of a world without Jews? Yes,” he says, answering his own question.
He insists Jewish leaders are misguided in the way they are trying to save Judaism. “The issue is not Jewish continuity. It’s Jewish content,” he insists. “We are in search of Jewish content.”
He says emphatically, “We need to become the people of the book again.”
Perhaps Hartman will be remembered best as the mentor for journalist Thomas Friedman, who in his early days at the New York Times covered Israel. Hartman is prominently mentioned in Friedman’s book “From Beirut to Jerusalem.”
It’s easy to see how Friedman fell under his spell. I was among a group of cynical Jewish journalists who earlier this month visited Hartman in Jerusalem and fell captive to his commentary. He didn’t lecture us as scholars like him often do. Instead he spoke in his characteristic series of sound bites — highly quotable invectives that any broadcast journalist would die for. The best way to write about David Hartman is to let his own words tell the story.
“The Holocaust is for mourning,” he says. “We need to take Jews off the victim psychology.”
Commenting on anti-Semitism, he says, “You can’t think you are going to bring up Jewish children on the hatred of the goyim. But we thrive on persecution. It’s a horrible disease we inherited in 2,000 years of the galut [exile].”
Hartman opposes Birthright Israel, March of the Living and other programs meant to instill Judaism in young Jews, asserting, “It’s a total failure. To think we are going to create visceral Judaism is an illusion.”
The rabbi also disclaims people who say, “Come to Israel and be Jewish.” “My congregation in Montreal made aliyah when I came here [1971]. They came and became goyim.”
The problem with Israel, he says, is that “the wandering Jew has finally come home. “Now you can take off your shoes and relax.” Instead he says Israel should be “the greatest opportunity to rethink Judaism, rethink our tradition.”
But he also decries all the black-hatted religious Jews who are here, saying, “So far we’ve gone back to Eastern Europe. We need a living Judaism.”
He argues that most Jews have become too passive — relying on God to fix things, whether during the Passover Exodus from Egypt or the Six-Day War. Before Israel turned Gaza back to the Palestinians, “People from Gush Katif said, ‘God will not let this happen,'” Hartman recalls.
“When Jews argue from their own frame of reference, they often forget that there is an alternative frame of reference,” he says, pointing out that it’s usually not God who makes things happen. “Our capacity for self-delusion is infinite.”
Hartman mocks those who are waiting for God to act. “I don’t know what God is thinking. I don’t know what God is doing. But maybe he’ll wake up some day and correct it,” the rabbi says in all seriousness.
“Revolution will have to come from the grassroots, from the community, not the rabbinate,” Hartman insists.
And what does he want to happen?
“I’m not worried about the Jews being worried. I want them to study. I want them to be interesting.
“I want them to be hungry and to hear the voice of Torah. We need to help them approach it and not through authoritarianism.”
What does the ailing Hartman want to be remembered for?
“I’d like to be remembered as someone who never gave up and as someone who loved the Jewish people,” he says.
But he admits that he’s been depressed about the fate of the Jewish people, and often thought of suicide long before his current heart problems, uncontrollable shaking in both hands, a back fracture that forces him to wear a body bandage visible on the outside of his shirt and a tripod cane that helps him walk.
“I woke up in the morning depressed. But my God told me, don’t give up on the Jewish people.”
Certainly one of the things that kept him going was having an audience of journalists like us that gave him rapt attention. Before we could leave, he gave us instructions to follow.
“What does ‘kehillah HaShem’ mean? You are responsible to your community. You are the public voice of Judaism in your community.
“Demand of the rabbis to be spiritual leaders, not only to give sermons on Iraq and Bush. Tell them to teach Torah.”
He further instructed us to “force readers to think. Invite people with different voices to write. Create an issue, get different opinions and write about it.”
Are we ready to turn Judaism on its head as Hartman requests? Are Jews ready to be challenged and learn Torah in a new way?
I have my doubts. Look at what happened to Hartman’s own congregation from Montreal. He says they came to Israel and became non-Jews.
That means he couldn’t succeed with his own flock.
Yet I so much want to believe that we can avoid Hartman’s warning of a future world without any Jews. I so much want to see our people survive and our religion prosper.
But what will it take to make the people of the book pick up a Jewish text and read it? What kind of sermon will make us want to argue about Judaism and learn more about our faith?
Or will Hartman’s dire warning of a world without any Jews come to pass?
Marc S. Klein, the editor and publisher of j., attended the International Conference of Jewish Newspaper Editors in Israel earlier this month.