[Avodah] the Torah is not Religion

[Prof. Levine]

The following is from RSRH's Essay Sivan I that appears in his 
Collected Writings of RSRH, Volume I.  The entire essay is at 
http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/sivan_1.pdf

One is accustomed to call the Torah "Religion" or Jewish
Religion, because the word religion describes everywhere outside
Israel the relationship of man to his God or gods; this word, too, is
invested everywhere else with dignity and holiness; could one then
have found a holier and more impressive designation for the Torah
than religion? And yet, it is exactly this term "religion" which has
made it so difficult to understand the essence of the Torah. From the
time when men first drew breath on earth they have had a kind of
religion. The heathen who prays to his fetish, the Aborigine who
moulds his god of honey-dough and paints it with human blood, the
Greek who carved his god of gold and ivory and ascribed to him the
Invention of his arts and indulgence in his own gallantries, and finally
the adherents of those two world-religions which have come into
existence by combining a few ideas from the Torah with various
conceptions taken from the nations of the world-all these had, and
continue to have some kind of religion. Even the atheist who despises
religion has, perhaps, himself retained some sort of religion; it may be
that he denies only the conception which other men have of God, that
he despises only the kind of religion which he finds among other
people. For by religion we understand the conception which men have
formed and are still forming of a Godhead and their relationship to
this Godhead. The religions of mankind are, therefore, human products-
creations of the mind and spirit of man; and there exists
consequently a genesis, a history of the development of religion and
religions, just as there exists a history of languages, arts and sciences.
The religion of a people rises and falls together with the other manifestations
of its culture. Religion is only part of the cultural life of a
nation and is conditioned by it. The more rational and the more
refined men are, the more rational and elevated will be their conception
of the deity and their relationship to it.

No religion can, therefore, in its beginning, rise above the cultural
level of the nation out of whose midst it arose. No religion, in its
inception, can possibly be in complete contrast to the conceptions,
inclinations and outlook on life of that nation. No religion, in the
ordinary meaning of this word, can easily undertake to raise and
educate the nation from which it sprang, up to its own higher standards;
for it (the religion) is but a plant sprung from the spiritual and
intellectual soil of that nation, and must, therefore, keep pace with the
nation's advancement or retrogression.

The Torah, however, did not spring from the breast of mortal man;
it is the message of the God of Heaven and Earth to Man; and it was
from the very beginning so high above the cultural level of the people
to which it was given, that during the three thousand years of its
existence there was never a time yet during which Israel was quite
abreast of the Torah, when the Torah could be said to have been
completely translated into practice. The Torah is rather the highest
aim, the ultimate goal towards which the Jewish nation was to be
guided through all its fated wanderings among the nations of the
world. This imperfection of the Jewish people and its need of education
is presupposed and clearly expressed in the Torah from the very
beginning. There is, therefore, no stronger evidence for the Divine
origin and uniqueness of the Torah than the continuous backsliding,
the continuous rebellion against it on the part of the Jewish people,
whose first generation perished because of this very rebellion. But the
Torah has outlived all the generations of Israel and is still awaiting
that coming age which "at the end of days" will be fully ripe for it.
Thus, the Torah manifests from the very beginning its superhuman
origin. It has no development and no history; it is rather the people of
the Torah which has a history.

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