Introduction to the Philosophy of Shalom Tsadik

Postmodern Orthodox Orthopraxy

I think his ideas are particularly prescient as they relate to the idea of leading an orthopraxic Jewish life. This is a translation of an interview he gave to the Hebrew language newspaper Makor Rishon, you can find the original interview here.

It’s not easy to schedule a meeting with Prof. Tzadik. As one might expect from a scholar of medieval thought, he completely abstains from using a cellphone. “The Middle Ages weren’t as terrible a time as secular culture paints them,” he claims. “Many so-called ‘dark’ phenomena—like slavery or negative attitudes toward women—mainly began in the early modern period. People wrongly assume that things were always this way in the past, so they blame the Middle Ages. And on the other hand, whenever something positive is found in the Middle Ages, historians decide to call it the ‘Early Modern Period’ or the ‘12th Century Renaissance,’ rather than simply admit that the Middle Ages weren’t so bad.”

Prof. Tzadik, 44, is, full disclosure, my doctoral advisor in the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Ben-Gurion University. He recently published a new book—A Call for the Revival of Religious Philosophy (Ktav Publishing)—in which he seeks to find a surprisingly forgotten answer to the challenge of faith in a little-known Jewish philosophical stream from the Middle Ages.

Questions of faith are common for any Israeli rabbi. It’s not unusual for young people to come up and confide in me, more or less in these words:
“I grew up in a religious family. I love Torah and mitzvot, but I have doubts about belief. The miracles described in the Bible don’t seem logical to me. The afterlife and resurrection sound like made-up stories. I find it hard to believe someone watches over every detail of my life and rewards or punishes me for every mitzvah or sin. I want to stay religious. I wish I could believe, but I feel it’s impossible. The faith I was raised with just doesn’t make sense to my intellect.”

This is a question every rabbi encounters. Sometimes it’s asked with pain, sometimes with despair or defiance. Sometimes it arises after a personal or national crisis that shakes one’s belief in divine providence. Other times, it’s the result of academic studies that raise questions about the authorship or content of the Torah. When these questions go unanswered, there are consequences. A survey published a few years ago in this newspaper among young people in the religious-Zionist sector showed that one of the most common reasons for becoming secular (about 24% of respondents) was theological and philosophical difficulties. Rabbis and educators have been grappling with this challenge for centuries—with mixed success.

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Wearing a large kippah atop his head, with beard and sidelocks, Prof. Tzadik stands out in the academic world. The fact that he’s a ba’al teshuvah raising 11 children with his wife, Rebbetzin Navit, in the settlement of Otniel, is also unusual. But his impressive academic resume—four books and dozens of articles in prestigious journals—helps explain how he became a senior lecturer at just 35. Still, for Prof. Tzadik, academic research is only a means to an end. His true goal is to fix society. This time, he’s trying to do that through a book offering a broad, revolutionary response to the crisis of faith.

So what do you tell a young man who says he just can’t believe?

“The problem,” he says, “is that we’ve gotten used to equating ‘religion’ with ‘conservative beliefs about religion.’ But what I show in the book is that there was a significant period in Jewish history when it was understood that this connection is not necessary. Deeply religious people could still question those beliefs. Just like today we debate between Rav Kook and Rav Soloveitchik—though we believe our view is correct, we don’t say the other side isn’t religious. In the Middle Ages, there was a religious stream that believed reward and punishment and divine providence were myths meant for the masses, while the real God is a static being who primarily created the laws of nature. What happened is that at some point in the early modern period, this stream was completely erased from public consciousness. A consensus emerged—between conservatives and atheists alike—that religiosity must involve supernatural and miraculous beliefs. That’s why a modern person who begins to question whether God spoke at Sinai, or whether there’s an afterlife, ends up questioning whether they can be religious at all. Even though, practically, whether or not to keep putting on tefillin doesn’t necessarily depend on one’s theological or historical beliefs about Sinai.”

And does it work?

“There’s a price to moving from a religious to secular world, or vice versa. A price that only rises with age. When someone comes to me who’s already taken off his kippah and told his parents or wife that he’s become secular, in the vast majority of cases there’s no going back. He’s already paid the social price, and it’s hard to reverse after such a cost. But if someone comes while still in doubt, in most cases we manage to find a theological stance he can live with. It’s like an illness that must be diagnosed early. What I’d like is that, instead of diagnosing and treating after the fact, we administer a vaccine from the start. That doesn’t mean everyone should grow up to be philosophers—but just as every religious child knows there was a disagreement between Chassidim and Mitnagdim, they should also know there was a disagreement between rationalist philosophers and conservative theologians. And even if the teacher prefers the conservative view, just having the rational option in public consciousness will help. That way, if someone gravitates toward it in the future, he won’t think of himself as someone with a ‘crisis of faith’ but as someone leaning a bit more toward Maimonides than toward the traditionalists.”

“Secular society promotes freedom of sexuality and consensual relationships—but ends up with high rates of single-parent families. Many people want the social benefits that religion offers. But because of the artificial tie between religion and its associated beliefs, they can’t accept it.”

Prof. Tzadik was born to a traditional family in Switzerland and from age 10 attended a local, non-Jewish school. His observance of mitzvot deepened at age 13, when the nature of gender relations in secular society sparked a desire for a more conservative world. At 14, he moved with his family to Jerusalem and began studying at the Hartman High School, where he encountered Prof. David Hartman and the world of religious philosophy. From there he went to the Otniel Hesder Yeshiva. During military service, he completed most of his BA in Jewish Thought and continued to the Hebrew University (MA), Ben-Gurion University (PhD), Tel Aviv University, and the Van Leer Institute.

His movement between yeshiva and academia confuses both sides. He says he “prefers being a religious Jew in academia to being a heretic in the yeshiva,” but insists that both roles are vital to shake each world out of its ossified assumptions.

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To some extent, I can go along with Prof. Tzadik. In Yeshivat Har Etzion, I was raised on the story of Rav Yehuda Amital, who was once asked by a student whether the Book of Isaiah was written by one prophet, as traditional faith holds, or by multiple authors, as academic research suggests. “I don’t know,” answered Rav Amital. R. Yigal, head of the school, who overheard the conversation, was shocked: “How could you question the unity and holiness of the Book of Isaiah?” Rav Amital replied, “That shmendrik isn’t really worried about Isaiah’s authorship. He’s just looking for an excuse to stop putting on tefillin. And with my answer, I showed him that even if I can’t answer every question, I still put on tefillin.”

But the sacred cows Prof. Tzadik is willing to slaughter are much holier than the question of Isaiah’s authorship. The philosophical positions he surveys in his book reject the giving of the Torah at Sinai, deny the afterlife (or any form of life after death), and dismiss the idea of divine providence.

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If there’s no supernatural element to reality, why keep Torah and mitzvot?
“Personally, I tend to think like Plato—that there’s something beyond the material world. And I believe, like Aristotle, that humans have a spiritual, higher aspect, and that fulfilling it brings happiness. But even if we assume the world is purely material, and human consciousness is just neurons firing in the brain, one still needs to be religious to be happy and have a stable family life.”

“The radical religious philosophers, followers of Averroes (Ibn Rushd), believed that Torah and mitzvot were given for purely social purposes. And they were right in the sense that even if there’s no supernatural truth behind Torah and mitzvot—even if they’re just myth—they still work. A society with a myth is a more successful society. Even if we’re just sophisticated apes, Torah and mitzvot make us happy dogs. And even if humans are animals, we’re social animals who need stable family structures, and you can’t get that without religious law.”

“Postmodern skepticism eats itself alive. It’s causing societies that follow it to self-destruct. There’s never been a time in history when people used so many chemicals to forget how miserable their lives are—like in the affluent but depressed modern liberal West. Modern Western life makes people unhappy and society dysfunctional. Secular society promotes freedom of sexuality and relationships by mutual consent, but delivers high rates of single-parent families. Many people understand this and want the social benefits religion offers—stable families, children, etc.—but they can’t access them because of the artificial link between religion and supernatural beliefs.”

But I can understand the value of such an illusion—but how can you live with it when you know it’s an illusion? What do you think about when praying for healing or livelihood in the Amidah if you don’t believe in divine providence?

“You don’t necessarily have to mean the literal words. Of the millions who pray each morning, only a few actually focus on the words. Some think about oil prices or the stock market. Others think about mystical combinations of divine names unrelated to the words' simple meaning.

When I pray, I do so as Maimonides taught. He explains in The Guide for the Perplexed that a person should reflect on what God wants from him and how to fulfill it. That’s what I try to think about when I recite the prayers. People think that if the purpose of mitzvot is educational, then they’re worthless. That if the goal of prayer is to think about God, then we could just think about God in our free time. But that’s wrong. A person without fixed times and routines will never get there in real life. That’s the role of prayer: to remind us of life’s long-term goals. When I kiss the mezuzah, I’m reminding myself of the ideals I aim for. The more one considers life through the lens of those long-term goals, the better his life will be—and that’s divine providence.”

And why keep our Torah, if you don’t believe in the revelation at Sinai?

“Holy books should be judged by their educational value. The fact that the Bible and rabbinic literature were written thousands of years ago and still manage to educate society in moral and spiritual values—that’s the best proof of their holiness. That those who wrote them—whoever they were—had an extraordinary understanding of human psychology and social structure. That’s how I understand what Maimonides meant by ‘Torah from Heaven.’ Since my spiritual and social world is important to me and I take it seriously, I observe the laws even without believing in the miraculous stories attached to them. Unlike Kabbalistic literature, which, in addition to its serious philosophical flaws, also promotes negative educational messages like an almost obsessive focus on sexuality.”

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“There was a religious stream in the Middle Ages that believed reward and punishment and divine providence were lies for the masses, while the real Creator was a static being who mainly created the laws of nature. What happened is that in the early modern period, this stream was completely erased from public consciousness.”

Prof. Tzadik’s message is indeed different from what one usually finds in religious or academic texts, but it aligns with broader intellectual trends in Israel over recent decades. One of the best-known figures challenging conventional religious assumptions is Rabbi Dr. Michael Avraham, who advocates a “thin theology” and questions the binding authority of several foundational beliefs. Despite similarities—and despite criticism from the conservative camp—Prof. Tzadik insists there are essential differences:

“Our starting points are similar in that we both build religious frameworks on philosophical foundations. But our conclusions differ. Rabbi Michael Avraham uses philosophical tools to prove the existence of divine revelation conveying truths humans couldn’t reach on their own. I, on the other hand, don’t believe in any supernatural revelation. At the same time, Rabbi Avraham adopts the liberal moral values of the Western world and tries to reconcile them with Torah. In that sense, he resembles liberal religious streams. I, in contrast, believe in the moral values of Aristotle and Maimonides—not in progressive, liberal morality. In that sense, I’m much closer to American conservative movements that critique progressive morality. But I can’t join them either, because I reject the capitalist ideology they promote. I believe the fundamental role of society is to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, through an aggressive welfare state.”

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During the years I studied under Prof. Tzadik at Herzog College, I witnessed resurrection with my own eyes. Students who only signed up for the course on “The Philosophy of R. Hasdai Crescas” because it fit their schedule ended up passionately debating core issues of Jewish belief. I myself, who first came to his class just to pass time between lunch breaks, was captivated by his charisma and followed him into an MA and PhD. Even though I still doubt many of his beliefs, I was deeply persuaded of the vitality of religious philosophy. Time and again, I found myself reading works written 700 years ago in Spain, discovering intellectual depth and originality that stretched and enriched my religious thought in ways long forgotten.

**Like any living religious movement, the revival of religious philosophy has stirred fierce controversy. In recent days, heated debates erupted on social media when Rabbi Shmuel Ariel declared Prof. Tzadik’s views to be heretical and said one cannot remain in a beit midrash where such things are taught. I understand him. I remember walking out of one of Prof. Tzadik’s classes and thinking, ‘Now I understand why the conservative rabbis burned Maimonides’ books.’ Had I had a torch in hand, I might have burned them myself. And yet, I still prefer a stormy religious argument—one that forces us to clarify our foundations—over a sleepy stagnation from which we only awaken when confronted by a thinking, critical teenager who wants to take off his kippah.”