Judaism’s Dialectic Essence

The early 20th century novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once quipped that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Standing at Sinai marked the beginning of a transformative social process, the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks argued, functioning as a launching pad of the Jewish people into history. As the Children of Israel found themselves at the foot of the mountain in next week’s Torah portion, Yitro, they forged a social covenant with God. “In a covenant,” Rabbi Sacks wrote, “two or more people, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, come together in a bond of loyalty and trust to do together what neither can achieve alone.” Centuries later, as they entered the land of Israel and requested of the prophet Samuel that they be given a king, the Jewish people began the process of state-building, a social contract between citizens. 

In articulating this dual nature of the divine relationship with Israel begun at Sinai — one that is both covenant and contract — Rabbi Sacks was utilizing one of his favorite frameworks, drawn from a figure whose classroom he never sat in but whose teachings he absorbed and later articulated in his own distinct manner.

As Daniel Ross Goodman notes in his recently published “Soloveitchik’s Children,” Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote early and often of Jewish dialectics — the dynamic tension of holding oppositional ideas in tandem. “Halakhic man reflects two opposing selves,” is how his magisterial “Halakhic Man” begins, as he positions “cognitive man” alongside “homo religiosus” (religious man). Rabbi Soloveitchik’s equally renowned volume, “The Lonely Man of Faith,” discusses “two Adams, two men, two fathers of mankind, two types, two representatives of humanity.” The first, the Adam of the first chapter of Genesis, is told to subdue the earth, and is therefore an active, dignified, and majestic figure. The Adam described in Genesis’ second chapter is passive and receptive, more servant than subduer. 

A young Jonathan Sacks met Rabbi Soloveitchik in the hallway of Yeshiva University in 1968. As Rabbi Sacks later recounted in a moving 1993 eulogy for Rabbi Soloveitchik, Sacks sat “on the bench with him, just outside the room, in the corridor, for two hours, and in those two hours he taught me about halacha.” As Goodman adeptly argues, Sacks ended up carrying the dynamic of dialectic for decades after that fateful encounter — in considering realms within and beyond Jewish law. 

There are, according to Sacks, two modes of Jewish leadership — the priestly mode, centered on systems and order, and the prophetic mode, focused on justice and morality. 

Prayer too possesses this dualism: The silent Amidah recalls the intensely personal prayers of the patriarchs and prophets. The public repetition represents the daily sacrifices offered by the priests in the Temple on behalf of all Israel (there is no repetition of the evening Amidah because there were no sacrifices at night). Thus the prayers weave priestly and prophetic, individual and collective voices.

Achieving spiritual success, Rabbi Sacks argued, can manifest in one of two ways, that of a sage and that of a saint. The sage follows Maimonides’ “middle way,” in which “The moral life is a matter of moderation and balance, charting a course between too much and too little. Courage, for example, lies midway between cowardice and recklessness. Generosity lies between profligacy and miserliness.” The saint, personified by the figure of the Nazir, “tends to extremes, fasting rather than simply eating in moderation, embracing poverty rather than acquiring modest wealth.”

Time, too, is of two modes. There is the Shabbat, showcasing “the presence of God in nature” and the festivals, highlighting “God’s presence in history.”

There are two types of freedom. Citing the political theorist Isaiah Berlin, Rabbi Sacks wrote often of “freedom from” and “freedom to,” negative freedom and positive freedom. “Politics may give us ‘freedom from,’” Rabbi Sacks theorized, “but morality gives us ‘freedom to’— to dance the choreography of interpersonal grace and be part of the music of loving commitment to the lives of others.”

Inheritance, per the Bible, can be conducted through yerushah or nachalah. The word nachalah, Rabbi Sacks wrote, “comes from the root nachal, which also means ‘river.’ It represents an inheritance that is merely handed down, without any work on the part of the recipient, as water flows in a river. Yerushah, by contrast, means active inheritance … actively taking hold of what one has been promised.”

There are moral obligations to our particular family or tribe but also duties to humanity as a whole.

There is Torah, knowledge particular to the Jewish people, and chokhmah, wisdom accessible to all the world.

“Each of us carries the inescapable burden of duality, of being true to our faith while recognizing the image of God in, and being a blessing to, those who are unlike us.” – Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

“Each of us,” Rabbi Sacks noted in a summarizing statement, “carries the inescapable burden of duality, of being true to our faith while recognizing the image of God in, and being a blessing to, those who are unlike us.”

At the revelation at Sinai, two tablets were given. They contained commandments governing our relationship with humanity and God in heaven — keys not of human functioning but of flourishing. For centuries since, the nature of this dual covenant has echoed. For Rabbi Soloveitchik and later, Rabbi Sacks, two intellectual titans of our tradition, it was through Judaism’s dialectic essence that man and the divine could continue to find connection.

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include the upcoming The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada, which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, Esther in America, Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth and Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.