Arthur A. Cohen
ON JUDAISM AND MODERNISM
Let us agree upon working definitions of both Judaism
and modernism . Without them-even if they are definitions laid
down by stricture (since you are not in a position to instantly reply
and set me straight) - no progress can be made in describing their
interaction and conflict.
Judaism is a religion founded upon a covenant made by God
with the Jewish People through the instrumentality of Moses. It is a
religion grounded in a fundamental myth (that God in fact spoke
and transmitted his will through his servant Moses to a recalcitrant
people) combined with an innovative sense of history (that eternal
persons become concrete in time , express their wills in language and
through the workings of words, actions, and interpretation are con–
served and transmitted to future generations of believers) .
Modernism claims no such revelation, but it is grounded no
less than Judaism upon both myth and history. Its definition is that
the meaning and sensibility of contemporary culture is not to be
found in the unfolding of historic events and encounters but in the
inner workings of the psyche and the self. Its corollaries are that
nothing is literally true ; everything must be interpreted according to
rules and principles defined by the aesthetics, language, ethos of the
artist-maker. There may be an objective historical correlative, but it
is less significant to the modernist impulse than the authenticity of
the self that authorizes and makes the work. The myth of modernism
lies in the nature of the critique that it delivers to rationalism, to
romanticism, and to historicism, claiming that all three reflect the
smug and self-assured doctrines that made of the nineteenth century
the pesthole and breeding swamp of contemporary disasters.
Modernism raised questions not merely about the relation of
art to eternal truths - that issue had already been settled by the
disengagement of the arts from the service of the sacred - but more
to the point, about the purpose of art on any terms. Why art at all,
other than to satisfy the requirements of a prosperous bourgeoisie
Editor's Note: This essay was presented as a talk given at the National J ewish Book
Awards, M ay 17 , 1984, at the New York Public Library.
