Читать книгу The Essential Agus - Steven T. Katz - Страница 10

JACOB AGUS (Agushewitz) was born into a distinguished rabbinical family in the month of Heshvan 5671—corresponding to November 2, 1911—in the shtetl of Sislevitch (Swislocz), situated in the Grodno Dubornik region of Poland. Descended through both parents from distinguished rabbinical lines (his mother being a member of the Katznellenbogen family), the young Agus, one of a family of seven children—four boys and three girls—early on showed signs of intellectual and religious precocity. After receiving tutoring at home and in the local heder, he joined his older brothers, Irving and Haim, as a student at the Mizrachi-linked Tachnemoni yeshiva in Bialystock. Here he continued his intensive talmudic and classical studies, winning high praise as an illui (a genius) from the faculty of the yeshiva, and also began to be exposed to the wide variety of Jewish lifestyles and intellectual positions—ranging from secularist and bundist to Hasidic—that existed among Eastern European Jews. Raised in an almost totally Jewish environment, he knew little Polish and had limited relations with the non-Jewish world.

In the mid-1920s, as economic and political conditions worsened in Poland, many members of the Jewish community of Sislevitch emigrated to Palestine. This migratory wave also included the Agushewitzes, who arrived in Palestine in 1925. Unfortunately, the economic conditions and the religious life of the Yishuv, the emerging Jewish community in the land of Israel, were not favorable, and the Agushewitz family, including Jacob, now sixteen, moved again in 1927. This time they traveled to America, where Jacob’s father, R. Yehuda Leib, had relocated one year earlier to fill the position of rabbi in an East Side New York synagogue. R. Yehuda Leib later became a schochet (ritual slaughterer).

The family settled in Boro Park (Brooklyn), and Jacob, who already was able to read and write in English at a high school level, attended the high school connected with Yeshiva University. This marked a turning point in his personal life, for in this American yeshiva not only did students pursue a talmudic curriculum but—on the ideological presumption that all true human knowledge, the whole of creation, reflected God’s wondrous ways—they were also exposed to a wide variety of secular and scientific subjects. For the remainder of his life, Jacob Agus would adhere to this religious-philosophical model.

After completing high school, Jacob attended the recently established Yeshiva University, where he continued both his rabbinical and secular studies, distinguishing himself in the secular realm in the areas of mathematics and science. He was so good at chemistry that he was encouraged to attend courses in this subject at Columbia University, which he did. He even briefly flirted with the idea of graduate work in chemistry. However, his deepest, commitment was to Jewish studies and to the Jewish people, and he therefore chose a rabbinical career. A favorite of the founder and president of Yeshiva University, R. Bernard Revel, and the outstanding student of R. Moshe Soloveitchik, the head of the rabbinical school, Agus received his rabbinical ordination (smicha) in 1933. After two further years of intensive rabbinical study, Agus received the traditional “Yadin Yadin” smicha in 1935, an ordination intended to place Agus on the same level as those rabbinical students who graduated from the European yeshivas and to enable him to act as a Poseik (halakic, or legal, decision maker).

While still at Yeshiva University, Agus also served as an assistant to R. Leo Jung, a distinguished member of the American Orthodox rabbinate. In this role, at R. Jung’s request, he researched the basis for requiring a mechitza (a partition between men and women) in the synagogue and concluded that there was no firm biblical or rabbinical basis for this halakic requirement—an early sign of important decisions to come.

After graduation from Yeshiva University in 1935, Agus took his first full-time rabbinical position in Norfolk, Virginia. Here he began to learn the trade of an active pulpit rabbi while continuing his Jewish education. Foremost among his educational pursuits at this time was an intensive study of midrash (the rabbinic commentaries on the Bible), guided, via the mail, by Professor Louis Ginsberg of the (Conservative) Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the great authority on midrash.

Having satisfied himself that with this control of the vast midrashic material, along with his talmudic erudition, he had reached a sufficiently well-rounded knowledge of classical Jewish materials, Agus began to pursue further secular studies in a serious and concentrated way. Convinced that these pursuits required a more intensive academic environment, he left Norfolk in 1936 for Harvard University, where he enrolled in the graduate program in philosophy. At Harvard his two main teachers were Professor Harry A. Wolfson, a master student of the history of Jewish philosophy, and Professor Ernest Hocking, a metaphysician of distinction.

While in the Boston area, Agus paid his way by taking on a rabbinical position in Cambridge and continued his rabbinical learning with R. Joseph Soloveitchik, the son of his Yeshiva University mentor, with whom he quickly formed a close friendship. For several years, Agus and the younger Soloveitchik met weekly to study Maimonides’ philosophical and rabbinical works, as well as to discuss a host of more contemporary theological and halakic issues.

It was also in Boston that Agus met his future wife, Miriam Shore, the daughter of Bernard Shore, a Lithuanian Jew who had immigrated to America and become a Boston businessman. The Aguses married in 1940, with R. Joseph Soloveitchik officiating.

Harvard, however, was not all joy. In this great center of learning Agus for the first time in his life encountered serious, even intense, criticism of traditional Judaism. In response, he decided to devote a good deal of his energy for the remainder of his life to explicating, disseminating, and defending the ethical and humanistic values embodied in the Jewish tradition, particularly as these values were interpreted by its intellectual and philosophical elites, beginning with the Prophets and running through Philo, Saadya, Maimonides; and such modern intellectual giants as Hermann Cohen and R. Abraham Isaac Kook. Agus’ first step on this path was his doctoral dissertation, published in 1940 under the title Modern Philosophies of Judaism, which critically examined the thought of the influential German triumvirate of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Martin Buber, as well as the work of Mordecai Kaplan, who in 1934 had published the classic Judaism as a Civilization that established his reputation as the leading American Jewish thinker.

After receiving his doctorate from Harvard, and with the encouragement of R. Revel, who wished to strengthen the foundations of modern Orthodoxy in the Midwest, Agus accepted the post of rabbi at the Agudas Achim Congregation in Chicago. Though the congregation permitted mixed seating, it was still considered an Orthodox synagogue. In this freer midwestern environment, removed from the yeshiva world of his student days, the orthodoxy of Yeshiva University, and the intensity of Jewish Boston, Agus began to have doubts about the intellectual claims and dogmatic premises of Orthodox Judaism. In particular, he began to redefine the meaning of halakah and its relationship to reason and independent ethical norms. Encouraged in this direction by Chicago’s leading Conservative rabbi, Solomon Goldman, and by the radical reconstructionism of Mordecai Kaplan, Agus had initiated the process of philosophical and theological reconceptualization that would define his increasingly revisionist and non-Orthodox thought.

In 1943, disenchanted with his Chicago pulpit, Agus accepted a call to Dayton, Ohio, where three small synagogues merged to form a liberal Orthodox congregation that became a Conservative congregation during his tenure. Given the proximity of Dayton to Cincinnati, he began an ongoing and cordial dialogue with the faculty and students of the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College (HUC). In particular, Agus became a colleague of R. Abraham Joshua Heschel, who had fled war-torn Europe and taken up a position at HUC. Like Agus, Heschel was the heir of a great rabbinical family and a master of all branches of classical Jewish and rabbinical learning, with a special affinity for the thought of Maimonides. Alienated from the “tone” of classical Reform, which still dominated HUC, Heschel became a regular visitor at the Agus home on Sabbaths and holidays, and Agus and Heschel formed a lifelong intellectual and personal collaboration that later manifested itself in joint efforts to alter the curriculum and character of the Jewish Theological Seminary, whose faculty Heschel joined in 1945, and in common undertakings on behalf of Jewish—Christian dialogue and various political causes.

Because of this intensive rethinking of modern Jewish thought—and perhaps also as a consequence of his engagement with Heschel—Agus turned his attention to the thought of R. Abraham Isaac Kook, the remarkable mystical personality who had served as the first chief rabbi of modern Palestine after World War I. (Kook died in 1935.) The result was Agus’ Banner of Jerusalem, published in 1946, which sought to explore Kook’s neocabalistic, panentheistic notion of holiness (kedusha), that is, the doctrine that God’s presence was suffused throughout creation and incarnated most concretely in the Jewish people, the land of Israel, and the Torah. Deeply impressed by Kook’s intense spirituality and authentic mystical vision, Agus yearned to invigorate American Orthodoxy with something of the same visionary passion. Yet at the same time, his deep engagement with Kook’s traditional cabalistic Weltanschauung persuaded Agus that this essentially medieval worldview was one he did not, and could not, share. Modern Judaism had need of much that Kook had to teach, but it required that Kook’s lessons be made available through a different vehicle, in a form more suitable to the modern temperament.

At this point Agus still hoped he could achieve his goal of effecting meaningful religious and structural change within the parameters of the Orthodox community. Like Mordecai Kaplan, he now advocated the creation of a reconstituted, metadenominational Sanhedrin (supreme Jewish religious legislative body) that would possess the power to alter—to modernize—Jewish religious life and practice. Though several important members of the Orthodox rabbinate, including R. Leo Jung and R. Joseph Lookstein, apparently were sympathetic to this call in private, none, including R. Joseph Soloveitchik, would support it openly. This lack of support, as well as Agus’ own increasingly expansive and universalist spiritual and intellectual odyssey—one that was ever more appreciative of Western, non-Jewish culture and ever more critical of what Agus took to be certain forms of Jewish parochialism and chauvinism—led him, after his failure to gather support for an agenda of change and halakic reform at the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) convention in 1944 and 1945, to break decisively with the organized Orthodox community and its institutions.

This repercussive decision also reflected his personal experience as a community rabbi in a relatively small midwestern town like Dayton; for here Agus faced several new challenges. First, he had to be the force behind the restructuring of three congregations into one new, cohesive synagogue. Second, he had to respond to the personal needs of a religiously diverse group of Jews. Third, in the face of the unfolding catastrophe that engulfed the Jews of Europe, he had to offer Jews of limited learning who were attracted by the seductive options of assimilated life in America a Judaism that was intellectually and spiritually meaningful. Moreover, to his surprise he had discovered that he derived great satisfaction from his duties as a congregational rabbi. He enjoyed presenting sermons and lectures to his congregants—tasks at which he became very proficient, having hired a voice teacher to help him refine his oral delivery—meeting their pastoral needs, and even being active in the day-to-day affairs of the synagogue management; for example, he was very involved in the architectural design of the new sanctuary.

Disaffected from the Orthodox rabbinical community, Agus officially broke with the RCA in 1946—1947 and joined the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly. In this new context, by virtue of his rabbinical erudition, his Orthodox smicha, and the force of his personality, he became a powerful presence and an agent of change. Over against the conservative force exerted by Chancellor Louis Finkelstein and the great Talmudist Saul Leiberman, who between them controlled the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which in turn dominated the procedural processes of the Conservative movement, Agus, in consort with like-minded Conservative rabbis such as Solomon Goldman, Robert Gordis, Morris Adler, Milton Steinberg, Ben Zion Bokser, and Theodore Friedman, argued for a more open and dynamic halakic process within the movement.

As a first major step in this direction, Agus proposed that the Law Committee of the Conservative movement be restructured into the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS)—a change in more than name, the rationale for which is explained in his essays in Guideposts in Modern Judaism. He was, in turn, appointed to this committee (and to others) and remained a member of it for nearly forty years, until his death.

One of the earliest and best examples of his view on how the halakah should be interpreted is reflected in the important “Responsum on the Sabbath” that was issued by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards in 1950. This responsum stated that the use of electricity was permitted on the Sabbath and that riding to and from the synagogue on the Sabbath was also permitted. The first decision was arrived at by use of the traditional halakic process, with one major exception, and the second was justified as a takkanah (a rabbinic enactment) responding to the “needs of the hour.” Both instantiated Agus’ view that a reverent and reasoned approach to change and the admission of where the halakah was lacking were required to revitalize Judaism in the contemporary world.

It should also be remembered that these decisions were embedded in a lengthy report that placed central emphasis on a proposed program to “revitalize sabbath observance”; this was not merely a call for radical change and a capitulation to modernity. The program was to consist of standards to be promulgated for all United Synagogue member synagogues to lift the levels of observance. In the late 1940s and early 1950s observance by laypeople was extremely lax—few attended services, many worked, few had Friday-evening dinners, and many Jewish communal organizations held events that violated the Sabbath and at which nonkosher food was served.

R. Agus, impelled by a drive for honesty and integrity, held it wrong to encourage people to attend the synagogue on the Sabbath, with the knowledge that many individual’s would have to drive there, and then to insist that driving was an averah (a sin). In general, he thought that in keeping with modern sensibilities and the intellectual levels of congregants, the primary emphasis should be placed on encouraging mitzvot and not on alleging averot. The doing of each mitzvah was a good in itself and would lead to the doing of other mitzvot. This positive view, stressing the appropriate performance of mitzvot, is expressed in Guideposts and was an underlying principle of Agus’ halakic decisions.

As a recognized halakist, Agus was also asked by the United Synagogue to defend the principle of mixed seating in two secular court cases—one in New Orleans and one in Cincinnati—both of which occurred in the early 1950s. In both cases a deceased person had left funds in his will to his synagogue on condition that the synagogue remain “traditional.” At the time of the deaths, both synagogues had separate seating for men and women, but they did not have a halakically acceptable mechitza. In fact, by 1950 both congregations wanted to introduce mixed seating, a move that prompted a minority group of congregants to sue for the retention of separate seating on the grounds that mixed seating was a violation of the tradition.

In response, Agus pointed out that neither synagogue had a mechitza and yet each had been considered traditional in the eyes of the now-deceased donor. Therefore, one could argue that mixed seating was noless traditional than separate seating. He also explained the lack of any clear halakic basis for separate seating and the nature of change within the tradition.

To the Orthodox members of the Agudas ha-Rabbonim, the organization of European-trained rabbis, this was wholly unacceptable. They were engaged at the time in an effort to force all Orthodox synagogues to maintain a mechitza as a way of drawing a distinction between Orthodox and Conservative synagogues. In the early 1950s, under the aegis of R. Joseph Soloveitchik’s Halachah Committee, the Rabbinical Council of America issued a statement that mechitzas were required.

The Agudas ha-Rabbonim went further and issued a ruling that prayer within a synagogue without a kosher mechitza was not permitted and would not fulfill a person’s religious obligations. In the same ruling, they placed R. Agus in herem (excommunication) for teaching false ideas. Intermarriage with R. Agus and his immediate family was prohibited. It should be noted, however, that two of the gedolai ha-dor (recognized halakic authorities), R. Aharon Kitler and R. Moshe Feinstein, who were friends of R. Yehuda Leib A. Agushewitz, denied knowledge of and repudiated this action. Three other rabbis—Eisenstein, Groubard, and Greenfield—were also specifically placed in herem. However, several years later the leaders of the Agudas repudiated this document and claimed that it had never been properly executed.

In 1950, R. Agus accepted the position of rabbi at the newly formed Conservative congregation Beth El in Baltimore. A small congregation of some fifty families when he arrived, it grew over his three decades as its rabbi into a major congregation—so popular, in fact, that it had to restrict new memberships—and one of the premier Conservative synagogues in the United States.

In his role as community rabbi, Agus attended the daily morning minyan (prayer quorum), taught Mishnah or Talmud for ten to fifteen minutes to those who came, and always returned for the evening daily service as well. He visited the sick weekly, paid shivah (week-of-mourning) calls, attended committee meetings in the evenings, and met congregants at all hours. He gave serious forty-minute lectures to the men’s club each week, and hundreds of men attended on a regular basis. He did oral book reviews for the sisterhood. Agus also started adult education institutes for the whole community, attended by thousands. He planned the curriculum for the Beth El schools and taught the post—bar mitzvah class. He produced a siddur (prayer book) for everyday use that allowed services to be of a moderate length. He also changed the content of the services for late Friday night, Saturday morning, and holidays in ways that retained the traditional core of the liturgy but made the services more aesthetically pleasing, intellectually challenging, and time-efficient. His approach to services included intellectual sermons and beautiful congregational singing—all in a two-hour package. Congregants came on time and participated.

As a consequence of all this effort, Beth El moved to new suburban surroundings in 1960, reopened its membership rolls, and grew to a congregation of more than fifteen hundred families. It was typical of Agus that in the construction of the new building he worked closely with the architects and designers to ensure that it would be both aesthetic and Jewishly pleasing.

Here a word needs to be said about Agus’ view on the role of women in the synagogue. Consistent with his more general theological position, he felt that artificial barriers to the full participation of women should be eliminated. However, he cautioned that societal change must occur at a pace and in a manner that allowed people’s sensibilities to evolve and new means of order and value-teaching to develop. He was very concerned that the family be strengthened, not weakened, and feared that a radical transformation rather than measured progress on the role of women would disrupt the family and social order. In line with this understanding, he established a bas mitzvah ceremony on Friday nights because the issue of a woman’s receiving an aliyah (call to the Torah) had not yet been addressed by the Rabbinical Assembly. Once it was, and once the assembly’s CJLS approved aliyot for women—with Agus’ active support as a member of the committee—he instituted the practice at Beth El. Likewise, when the counting of women in the minyan was approved by the CJLS with Agus’ endorsement, Beth El followed suit.

The issue of female rabbis proved more complex. Agus felt that the CJLS should address the subissues of women as judges, witnesses, and shlichit tzibbur (leaders of public prayer) before that of rabbi. For political reasons, the Jewish Theological Seminary addressed the issue by setting up a commission, whose report attempted to skirt these halakic issues. R. Agus was upset at the process—he thought the report was deliberately disingenuous in not addressing the other issues of status, since everyone knew that once ordained, female rabbis would perform all of the functions not addressed. Though he agreed with the result, he disagreed with the process. Therefore, in a move that surprised both the left and the right, he led a group of Rabbinical Assembly members in rejecting the report’s recommendation.

During the 1950s, despite his congregational responsibilities, Agus continued his scholarly work. He was a regular contributor to a variety of Jewish periodicals, such as the Menorah Journal, Judaism, Midstream, and The Reconstructionist, and he served on several of their editorial boards. He also published on occasion in Hebrew journals. At the same time, he began to teach at Johns Hopkins University in an adjunct capacity, lecture at Bnai Brith institutes, and speak at colleges and seminaries around the country. In 1959 he published his well-known study The Evolution of Jewish Thought, an outgrowth of his lectures.

During this period, Agus also took an active interest in national and international affairs. A firm supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s and 1940s and a supporter of the creation of the United Nations, he distrusted socialism and hated communism. However, he believed in the necessity of moderate dialogue with the Soviet Union and supported public figures such as Adlai Stevenson who advocated a less belligerent relationship with the USSR. He was a significant opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy and openly fought McCarthyism, testifying on behalf of individual’s who were under suspicion, and he invited Professor Owen Lattimore of Johns Hopkins University to lecture at Beth El. Agus fought for the limitation of nuclear weapons, even for nuclear disarmament. He even disregarded a federal requirement that Beth El build a nuclear shelter, arguing that such an action legitimated the idea of nuclear war. He supported the Civil Rights movement and efforts to desegregate Baltimore, though he opposed affirmative action programs as unfair and had a visceral fear of black inner-city violence, which threatened many Jewish shopkeepers. He was an early and consistent opponent of the Vietnam War and supported the antiwar political positions of Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. In the 1970s, Agus was an active participant in an interfaith group started by Sargent Shriver to discuss the intersection of religion and politics.

Beginning in 1968, Agus, while continuing his rabbinical duties in Baltimore, accepted a joint appointment as professor of Rabbinic Civilization at the new Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in Philadelphia and at Temple University. Though not a reconstructionist, Agus had a long-standing relationship with Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the reconstructionist movement, and he respected what promised to be a serious and innovative rabbinical training program. Agus taught in this capacity until the end of the academic year in 1970, when he resigned from the RRC in a dispute over the curriculum and the amount of Talmud students should be required to learn. The faculty wanted to reduce the hours devoted to talmudic study, while Agus wanted to increase them. However, he retained his professorship at Temple University and continued to teach graduate courses at that institution until 1980, when he resigned and accepted an adjunct appointment at Dropsie College in Philadelphia. He held this position until 1985, when his health would no longer permit the heavy schedule of travel that professorship entailed. Agus also had served as visiting professor in 1966 at the Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires, affiliated with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

In addition to formal teaching, R. Agus taught the members of the local rabbinate on numerous occasions over the years. When he first came to Baltimore, he assisted local Conservative and Reform rabbis on an informal basis. In later years he gave seminars to rabbis in the Baltimore-Washington area on a bimonthly basis. Agus came to be known as the “rabbi of the rabbis” in the Baltimore-Washington area, because rabbis from all denominations of Judaism came to him not only to learn but also for advice on both personal and halakic issues. While his teaching was well known, the personal contacts were in confidence. The rabbis did invite him to speak before their congregations on a regular basis; for example, for a number of years he was invited to give a series of four lectures a year as part of the Sunday Scholar Series at Washington (Reform) Hebrew Congregation. Also, over the years students at the Ner Israel ultra-Orthodox yeshiva in Baltimore would come to see Agus at his house late at night to study Talmud. This study was kept secret because if it had become known, it would have resulted in the students’ expulsion from Ner Israel.

Another environment in which Agus taught was Christian seminaries. He lectured at Woodstock (Jesuit), Union Theological in New York City, and St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. St. Mary’s is the largest school for Catholic priests in the United States and is under the direct supervision of the Vatican. R. Agus was the first nonpriest, let alone Jew, officially authorized by the Vatican to teach Catholic seminarians. He lectured on the Jewish background and content of the Gospels for over ten years on a regular basis.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Agus was also active in projects that cut across the lines of Jewish organizational life. For example, he became involved in the recently founded organization of Jewish academic scholars and helped to establish a Jewish Philosophical Society. He worked with the American Jewish Committee at both the local and the national level on various communal issues, with the Synagogue Council of America on Jewish-Christian issues, and with a host of Jewish communal agencies.

In 1979—1980, Agus became part of a group of fifteen rabbis—five Orthodox, five Conservative, and five Reform—that was put together by the leaders of the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox), the Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative), and the Central Committee of American Rabbis (Reform) and that met in secret for a number of years to explore issues of theology and practice. Much of the early work of this group was based on papers prepared by Agus. He was very interested in and excited by this undertaking, as it brought him back into contact with people from Yeshiva University, including R. Joseph Lookstein, an old mentor. He found significant areas of commonality among the movement’s and even harbored some optimism that his quest to create a viable, religiously based Judaism for America would begin to move forward. Unfortunately, his illnesses and other factors aborted this effort.

From the 1950s, Agus likewise was active in the Jewish-Christian dialogue, in the hope of reducing anti-Semitism and helping to restructure the Christian understanding of Jews and Judaism. He worked closely with the American Jewish Committee in developing interfaith programs and was directly involved in relationships with Cardinal Bea that bore fruit in Vatican II. He worked with the National Council of Christians and Jews and actively participated in interfaith conversations, programs, and education at the local and state levels.

R. Agus became rabbi emeritus at Beth El in 1980. From 1980 to 1986, despite poor health, he continued his academic work, publishing his last book, The Jewish Quest, in 1983. He died on the twenty-third day of Elul, September 26, 1986.