Rationalism vs. Mysticism: Schisms in Traditional Jewish Thought

Natan Slifkin, Rationalism vs. Mysticism: Schisms in Traditional Jewish Thought (Torah and Nature Foundation/Gefen Books, 2021), 592 pp.

There are Ashkenazi Jews and there are Sefardi Jews, Hasidic Jews and Litvish Jews, Haredi Jews and Modern Orthodox Jews, Diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews. Just so, Natan Slifkin submits in Rationalism vs. Mysticism: Schisms in Traditional Jewish Thought, there are rationalist Jews and there are non-rationalist, or mystical, Jews (3). Rationalists are marked by their commitment to the pursuit of truth and knowledge about the world; their preference for data and evidence in place of faith; their belief in a well-ordered, natural universe with minimal interference from supernatural forces; and corollary commitments to understanding Torah and mitzvot as in service of broadly humanistic ends.

For the rationalist, the respective projects of human flourishing and serving God are fundamentally coherent and mutually reinforcing. Mystics, by contrast, are skeptical as to the capacities of human cognition without revelatory aid, understand the world as permeated with supernatural forces, and see Torah and mitzvot as fundamentally theurgic in character. For the mystic, the respective labors of natural human development and religious devotion can and often do come apart.

Granting that there are such contrasting trends among historical and contemporary Jews, why add to our ever-proliferating lexicon of demographic distinctions? Why reify and ramify further division and communal fracture, even, as Slifkin puts it, to the point of schism?

For Slifkin, the primary impetus seems to be a wish to defuse discord and enmity. He offers an analogy: "A yeshivah student might be infuriated to discover that his roommate does not follow the rulings of 'the Gadol HaDor'; but if he discovers that his room-mate is Sefardic, he accepts that obviously he is taking guidance from a Sefardic rabbinic authority instead" (3).

In the story, the initial infuriation is caused by a misunderstanding: The first student mistakenly believes that he and his roommate share a common normative structure, such that they could be mutually accountable for their decisions within that structure. What emerges, however, is that their respective normative systems are in fact so cleanly distinct as to render their decisions mutually impenetrable to critique. They don't share enough in common to make disagreement meaningful-each has his own respectivegedolim, and that's...