Bohemian Torah: Art, Science, and Orthodoxy in the Thought of Michael Wyschogrod

• In Event: Graduate Student Lightning Session: Philosophy, Mysticism, and Theology

Abstract

Although closely associated with such flagship institutions of American Orthodoxy as Yeshiva University and the journal Tradition, the late theologian Michael Wyschogrod was a consistent critic Modern Orthodox culture. Wyschogrod felt that Orthodoxy was characterized by a spiritual malaise, the root of which was a lack of theological self-confidence, and which took the form of a longing for comfort and security and an aversion self-reflection. A major manifestation of this malaise, according to Wyschogrod, was the attraction felt by Orthodox Jews to the natural sciences, coupled with an approach to Jewish learning which elevated halakhah above all else and interpreted halakhah along the model of mathematical physics. Wyschogrod championed a competing model of Torah as story rather than system, and consistently argued that the spiritual health of observant Judaism was dependent on producing Jews who were comfortable with the experimental and unexpected, at home in and nourished by the arts, and capable of producing art which expressed their Judaism. Arguing that the scientistic approach which he saw as dominating Orthodoxy produced Jews who were spiritually bifurcated and inarticulate, Wyschogrod maintained that only an Orthodoxy that was fundamentally artistic, and even bohemian, could be spiritually vital. This presentation will explore the ways in which Wyschogrod’s quarrel with what he saw as Orthodox scientism represents not only a critique of the ethos championed by Joseph Soloveitchik, but also a continuation of the debates over the roles of culture and science which shaped pre-War German Judaism.

Author

• Vincent Calabrese, Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at University of Toronto