Tikvah Fellow
Academic Year 2011-2012
Yehoyada Amir
Yehoyada Amir is a Rabbi and a Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew Union College (Jerusalem). He received his Ph.D. from Hebrew University (1994). He served for ten years (1999-2009) as the director of HUC-JIR’s Israel Rabbinic Program. He received rabbinic ordination from that institute in 2004. His academic works deal with wide range of modern Jewish philosophers (among others: Krochmal, Gordon, Cohen, Kaplan, Buber and Rosenzweig) and Post-Holocaust theology. Published: "Reason out of Faith: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig" (Hebrew), 2004;”A Small Still Voice: (Hebrew), 2009.
Amir lives in Jerusalem, is married to Geuli and they have two sons.
See also: http://yehoyada-amir.blogspot.com/
Research
Halakhah and Aggadah Religious Renewal in a Zionist Context: Non-Orthodox Philosophies in (Eretz) Israel
As a cultural movement Zionism has been striving for a new kind of Jewish life, essentially different from the “exilic” manner in which Jewish tradition has developed. This is especially true for “Spiritual Zionism” led by Ahad Ha-Am and his disciples and later “Religious (namely Orthodox) Zionism”, led by Rabbi A. I. Kook. My proposed study will analyze and evaluate the writings of A.D. Gordon, H.N. Bialik, Shmuel Hugo Bergmann, Martin Buber (from 1938 onward), Lea Goldberg and Eliezer Schweid. These thinkers, writers and philosophers were\are all heavily influenced by Ahad Ha-Am and most of them have also negotiated with Rabbi Kook in particular and with Orthodox Zionism at general. However, the kind of Jewish religious renewal they saw as essential to the Zionist project was in no way identical with either of these two precursors.
Shedding light on these philosophies, and doing so from the perspective of religious renewal is of essential importance. Not only will it deepen and broaden our understanding of these philosophies – some already discussed in length by myself as well as other scholars – but will also offer a new context which is vital for understanding the continuous perplexity and unease, which characterize Israeli discourse concerning Jewish identity and Jewish education. Interestingly enough, one should note that it is precisely the directions offered by these thinkers, that this discourse is constantly searching for, though not always in a fully conscious manner.
Judaism is a civilization of the deed and hence also Zionism. It is no wonder that at the heart of the attempts to encourage Jewish religious renewal lies the question of Orach-Chayyim, of commandments. In the non-Orthodox context this question is formulated in a non-halakhic ways, at least not in the usual way halakhism is understood. Bialik’s famous call, cited above, clearly points to this direction. It is a call to non-identified, non-religious "authorities" to set up practices that would be regarded as no less than mitzvoth. The author of Sefer-ha-Aggadah declares that only through a renewal of a type halakhah will Jewish life in Eretz-Israel be stabilized and grounded; he has no clear sense how this might happen.
