ON BEING OPTIMISTIC

IS JUDAISM AN OPTIMISTIC RELIGION?

By Rabbi Shubert Spero (Tradition)

The author addresses himself to the question of the nature of Judaism's outlook on the world and man – whether optimstic or pessimistic.

Two particular intellectual currents have been the favorites of Jewish theological surf riders in recent years. One is the existentialist wave of pessimism, the sense of human helplessness and the futility of human reason, ridden mainy by estranged intellectuals returning to Judaism. The second is the "know thyself" current of depth psychology and psychiatry ridden mainly by leaders of Liberal or Reform Judaism. Presumably, Orthodoxy can get to the beach on its own motive power and needs the help of neither current. Certain interesting issues, however, have arisen as a result of conflicting views on Judaism emerging from the two aforementioned groups. 

Ever since the publication of Peace of Mind fifteen years ago, publicists of Liberal Judaism have not tied of pointing out the affinity between the counsel of psychiatry and the insights of Judaism. The secret of happiness, it is asserted, lies completely with the human being and his ability to accept a new morality which will overcome inner anxieties, teach us how to love, accept death with courage, and become mature, responsible adults. God is to be encountered in a "good friend, a wise father, a loving mother, and in general in the love, sympathy and relationships of the world."1 Man is a responsible co-worker with God who must persist in his confidence in eternal progress and social victory. Peace of mind, so understood, seemed to have primarily negative connotations, i.e., the ability to accept life's disappointments, rejections, and death without becoming inwardly tormented, emotionally unhappy, or developing any recognizable neuroses or anxieties.2 The underlying premise peculiar to this entire tendency is the notion that with the eradication of all mental illness and social evils, life in its "natural healthy state" justifies itself and will itself generate fulfilment and satisfaction. 

Related to this view and indeed presupposed by it, is the oft repeated notion that Judaism is an optimistic religion. Speaking of the exaggerated pessimism of existentialists, a leader of Liberal Judaism tells us "this is diametrically opposed to Judaism which does not build God's absolutism on man's nothingness. Man can, to a large degree, make his own world and man has, to a large degree, made it."3 And again, we are told, "Judaism's faith is suffused with optimism and therefore reactions against tendencies towards varieties of asceticism among' Jews were bound to set in, for they were not at heart native or intrinsically Jewish. The life-loving and optimistic spirit of Judaism was certain to resist it."4 

It appears to the present writer that much of the discussion on this subject has failed to maintain the distinction between optimism as the quality of a metaphysics and optimism as the subjective state of an individual temperament. There can be no question that Judaism as a system of thought is metaphysically optimistic. Our view of the unity of God, the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, the perfectibility of man, the relative character of evil, and the promise of a Messianic future all reflect an over-all view which pronounces "good" upon the world and promises ultimate victory for the forces of divinity. However, it does not necessarily follow from this that the individual Jew, the devout believing Jew, was therefore endowed with, a sustained optimistic mental attitude. The very contrary can be shown to be the case. 

I disagree with the thesis which holds that historical lapses from "natural Jewish optimism" are to be explained in terms of persecution and suffering which darkened the cheerful Jewish spirit. ("Bruised spirits in dark hours might give way.") If persecution and suffering make for pessimism, then it would be more correct to say that by now pessimism has become "natural" for the Jew. Moreover, pessimism has more often been the result of repletion and satiety than of want and deprivation. Koheleth was written by Solomon and not by Bar Kochba! 

What I wish to assert is that any attempt to take God and Judaism seriously must involve profound, life-long anxieties and not peace of mind in any usual sense of that term; that metaphysical optimism notwithstanding, the more accurate description of the Jewish religious temperament is probably pessimism; that in spite of the fact that the Torah does not forbid us to enjoy life, it does not follow that the thinking Jew therefore necessarily does enjoy it. The origin of Liberal Judaism's bias in the direction of optimism is to be found in a weakness traditionally associated with the liberal position.5

It would be futile to attempt to demonstrate the optimistic or pessimistic character of Judaism solely by an appeal to appropriate passages in Scripture and in the Talmud. Let us assume that one could amass an impressive collection of references in support of either view. Of course, the very ability to do this would suggest a rather comfortable hypothesis. Perhaps, Judaism qua Judaism is "beyond pessimism and optimism" and is something which lends itself to free will, to the determination of individual temperaments and historical epochs.6 

Indeed, William James, in one of the earliest analyses of the psychology of religion, distinguishes between what he calls "the religion of healthy-mindness" and "the religion of the sick soul."7 The former is an expression of a religious sentiment which is happy, optimistic, and usually extroverted. It sees the good in all things, looks upon evil and misfortune as an "accident," and greets the dawn of each new day with cheer and joy. The latter road is the opposite of all this. The religion of the "sick soul" is pessimistic and is given to periods of melancholy and depression. This type of religious sentiment senses the dark side of things, suffering, and death and sees little in life to be cheerful about. As students of the psychology of religion have pointed out, it is doubtful whether the majority of individuals fall into the categories represented by the extreme poles of these two approaches. More likely, one. is apt to discover a continuum of characteristics.8 However, if these categories are in any way descriptive of basic human types, then one can: maintain that Judaism in its rich modal variety lies before the devotee and that the "sick soul" opts for those elements conducive to his temperament, while the "healthy minded" appropriates those aspects suitable to his emotional structure. 

While one may find occasional references which appear to support this approach, nevertheless I believe that a careful examination of the sources will reveal a structured view which leans in the direction of pessimism. Of the two broad outlooks on life, pessimism or optimism, the former represents the more realistic and the more Jewish view. Elsewhere, James rejects the view that answers the question "is life worth living?" with rejoinder "it depends upon the liver!"9 and casts his vote in favor of pessimism. Says he, "We are bound to say that morbid mindedness ranges over the wider scale of experience . . . the method of averting one's attention from evil and living simply in the light of the good is splendid as long as it will work. But it breaks down impotently as soon as tragedy comes."10 Of course, asserts James, there are the lucky few who live their years unscathed and appear to escape the frustrations and the failures, the catastrophes and the sudden death. However, even the most healthy minded of men must surely know what life can have in store. "The fact. that we can die, that we can be ill at all, is what perplexes us; the fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrelevant to that perplexity. We need a life not correlated to death, a health not liable to illness, a kind of good that will not perish, a good that flies beyond the goods of nature."11 As James astutely observes, "The luster of the present hour is always borrowed from the backgrounds of possibilities it goes with." Once a person's eyes are opened to the radical contingency of human life, the breath of the sepulchre will forever be present. Hence, "they [the morbid experiences of life] may be after all the best key to life's significance and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth."

From another direction, Freud, too, confirms the basic unfriendliness of life to the program of the pleasure-principle. From three pervasive quarters there constantly arise experiences which run counter to "happiness" construed in its narrow sense: from our own bodies, where anxiety and pain are danger signals of decay and dissolution; from the outer world with its forces of destruction; and from our relations with other men. Concludes Freud, "the intention that man should be 'happy' is not included in the scheme of 'creation.' "12 

I should like to call this realistic view which sees much of man's existence as characterized by suffering, anxiety, and frustrations as "first order pessimism." This type of pessimism has been incorporated in the philosophies of despair cultivated by the Stoics and the Epicureans. As James rightfully observed, Stoics and Epicureans should be considered not merely as historical schools, but as a "typical attitude marking a definite stage in the development of the sick soul"13 One can clearly see this kind of attitude reflected in the writings of many thinkers today who adopt the sober position of naturalism. While committed to a transcendent pessimism, they nevertheless advocate a philosophy which possesses at least courage and dignity. Sidney Hook, for example, recently pointed out that "pragmatism avoids the romantic pessimism of Bertrand Russell's free man shaking his fist in defiance of a malignant universe by being melioristic, not optimistic." According to Hook, "pragmatism is an attempt to make it possible for men to live in a precarious world of inescapable tragedy. . . by the arts of intelligent social control . . . It may be a lost cause. I do not know of a better one."14 

These views represent what James calls "the highest flight of purely natural man." 

Let us examine the claims of the advocates of Jewish optimism and the Jewish love of life and attempt to comprehend how this is achieved. The thesis has been suggested that the Jewish way of life with its Sabbaths, holidays, and ceremonials give to the Jew a "zest for life" by simply developing his faculty "to get more joy than sorrow out of life." "Although the cup of Jewish suffering was virtually always running over, the cup of Jewish joys was yet fuller."15 This is a rather strange notion. Does the concept of simchah shel mitzvah, and the fact that Jewish tradition bids us to enjoy life, imply that the resulting joy to the Jew is so intense that he will, to a greater degree than others, affirm life and tenaciously cling to it, "never be gloomy even in the most tragic periods," and "savor life as long as there is breath in one's nostrils?" What shall we say of Rabbi Judah the Prince who, at his death, called upon Heaven as witness that he did not enjoy this world even to the extent of his small finger?16 

An alternate explanation is one which shifts the grounds of the Jewish will-to-live from an egoistic, subjective hedonism to the concept of a transcendent "happiness." That is to say, Judaism as a system of values, irrespective of the joys it may give or not give, is considered meaningful and worthwhile. "Judaism fills the Jew rooted in the traditions of his people with the certainty of significant self-fulfillment before which even the harshest sufferings pale."17 This is, of course, something entirely different. Such a view of the Jewish affirmation of life simply draws the implications of its metaphysical optimism and assigns to life values and meaning which are beyond the reach of the vicissitudes of our worldly existence. But then, what is unique about this? There are countless philosophies of life, including the classic formulations of ancient Greece, which equates man's "happiness" with the fulfillment of his particular telos or end, each differently conceived. Such abstract "happiness," however, does not necessarily entail cheerfulness rather than sadness, joy rather than depression. 

Upon consideration, it appears that the initial effect of a religious consciousness upon the outlook and feeling tone of an individual is in the direction of pessimism. James, for example, maintains that pessimism is essentially a religious disease. "It consists in nothing but a religious demand to which there comes no normal religious reply." On the basis of mere animal existence, the expression of fist order pessimism can perhaps be overcome by the resignation and courage of the Stoic approach. Man is a small part of a cosmic process. This is life and there is no more. Let us make the best of it. 

But if, as a result of a religious orientation, man encourages attitudes which attribute a supreme worth to the human spirit and to certain values and which see a Spirit beyond reality and posit intrinsic good, then the sheer contradiction between the religious evaluation of things and the harsh reality of existence plunges him into a nightmarish pessimism of a far deeper nature. Precisely because life is good, intrinsically good, transcendentally good – is its negation bad. To the extent that the religious outlook invests life with tremendous spiritual opportunities, to that extent must it look upon every frustration of these opportunities with increased horror and a heightened sense of tragedy. Thus we arrive at a "second order pessimism" which has, as its reflective source, religious sentiment.

Whenever Judaism has been taken seriously, this element of pessimism has been apparent. Perhaps its clearest expression is to be found in the Talmud, where is recorded an issue debated for two and one half years between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. The House of Hillel maintained, "better was it for man to have been created than not to have been created," while the House of Shammai maintained "better would it have been for man not to have been created than to have been created." The issue was called to a decision and it was concluded that "better would it have been for man not to have been created, but now that he has been created, let him examine his behavior."18 What we have here does not contradict the accepted view of the metaphysical optimism of Judaism. "And the Lord saw everything that He had made and behold it was very good." Creation gives man an opportunity he would otherwise not have. Nevertheless, looked at existentially, as part of my own individual, personal being, the possibility (no matter how small) of not achieving the goal, the possibility of succumbing to sin and plunging into the abyss, the possibility that my fate might be "death and evil," can well engender the reaction: "neither thy sting nor thy honey," better that I not be given this crushing responsibility, better not to have been created! 

Indeed, the truly righteous person will constantly question and be critical of his own deeds and behavior and will he forever anxious about the state of his relationship with God. Does not the Bible itself record that Jacob, in his hour of peril, "was sorely afraid" lest his sins be the cause of a suspension of God's providence?19 Does not the Talmud stipulate that hints of the esoteric wisdom may be revealed only to him "whose heart worries inside of him?"20 There can be no question but that the individual who takes the absolute demand of his religion seriously will develop profound anxieties of guilt concerning the quality and validity of his religious response. The modern Mussar movement in particular stressed the need for constant vigilance and constant tension on the part of the God-fearing person. Rabbi Israel Salanter taught: "Man may be compared to a bird. It is within the power of the bird to ascend ever higher on condition that it continue to flap its wings without cessation. If it should stop flapping for a moment, it would fall into the abyss. So is it with man."21 

Psychologists have observed the conditional quality of even the most ego-bolstering of Jewish concepts. One of them remarks rather perceptively, "The Jews have very often been in situations which have caused them to doubt . . . the love of their God . . . All their trials and tribulations have been regarded as sent by God as punishment for their sins, but also as special proof of His love, since only through suffering could they be made worthy of a Covenant with Him . . . the Jew's self esteem has none of the serenity of certainty. It is restless and based on doubt."22 A recent sociological study of the Shtetl finds evidence of "intense and unremitting anxiety" in spite of strict observance of the Law. The very elements which Liberal Judaism sees as making for optimism are seen here as conducive to anxiety: 

"The combination of the two concepts, free wil and predestination, discourages fatalism and fosters anxiety. God has decreed the circumstances of each man's life but the individual alone is responsible for what he does with them. There are so many opportunities for failure in fulfillment of the commandments, in the amount of effort one expends on earning a livelihood, in all one's activities and relationships. Ignorance of circumstances may be an excuse, but ignorance of the Law is not, and there is no excuse for ignorance due to oversight or negligence. Obligations are so many, opposite God, family, and fellows, that no matter how much one does, it is never really enough. There is always the burden of undischarged duty. "23

There is yet another aspect to this issue. The existentialist analysis of man as a creature beset by a natural anxiety stemming from his awareness of his own finitude affords us an opportunity to restate the authentic Jewish view on a metaphysical level. Existentialist literature abounds with analyses of man's growing anxiety and sense of alienation. To call our time an "age of anxiety" has become almost a truism. Alienation is a fact. Undoubtedly all of the sociological explanations are relevant – the breakdown of the family, the impersonalism of modern industry, the uncontrollability of political events, the element of infinitude in the new cosmological image. Alienation is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Religious thinkers, however, have asked whether modern man's estrangement is merely "the itch of personal neuroses" to be overcome by the wisdom of the Fromms and Peales, or whether it is perhaps revelatory of human existence as it really is. The latter view holds that there are forms of anxiety which belong to existence as such and are to be distinguished from an abnormal state of mind, such as in neurotic anxiety. This notion Is already implicit in the account in Genesis where man is described as having been created in a condition of freedom, a condition of sheer possibility in which he can negate as well as affirm. destroy as well as create. This condition of indeterminate potentiality with its awful responsibilities is already a condition of anxiety. Finitude, temporality, selfhood, and sexuality are aspects of the grandeur of creation. But we rarely encounter them in this unspoiled condition. "Sin lieth at the door and its desire is unto thee but thou canst rule over it."24 

Kierkegaard, and Tillich after him, have raised the phenomena of guilt, fear, despair, the prospect of one's own death, and the prospect of salvation, beyond the sphere of purely psychological considerations into aspects of metaphysical thought, which is what they have always been for traditional Judaism. Kierkegaard maintains that the self is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the temporal, freedom and necessity.25 Man is thus not self-sufficient and can achieve true selfhood only by being related aright to God. Whether man is aware of it or not, God is both the criterion and the goal of selfhood. Hence, whoever has no God has no self, and who has no self is in despair which is a specific illness of man as spiritual being. Despair, to Kierkegaard, is any imbalance in the relationship of the self to itself. Any attempt by man to separate himself from the power which created hi, or to neglect what is eternal in him, or fight his spiritual nature, will result in despair. Kierkegaard goes. on to analyze the different types of despair such as the "despair of weakness" and the "despair of defiance" which correspond to well known types in the Jewish gallery of the godless. There is little here that Jewish theology could not agree with. Even Tillich's formulation 26 of the basic types of anxieties – the anxiety of death, the anxiety of meaningless, and the anxiety of guilt – are implicit in traditional accounts of repentance.*

Another approach, also not without interest to traditional Jewish thinking, sees as basic in current analyses of the dynamics of anxiety a positive urge which is somehow frustrated.

This view maintains that the experience of anxiety has a certain constant structure. Whether described by Catholic mystic, agnostic existentialist, or atheistic psychoanalyst, it exhibits a specific character. "That character is anxious longing. The experience itself is constituted by a polar tension between fear and longing. Anxiety is desire aware of a threat to its fulfillment."27

Could we not therefore understand anxiety as the consequence of a genuine desire for God, the longing for the elements of goodness and divinity and at the same time a reflection of the impediments faced by this finite creature in responding to this call? The anxiety of the sinner is thus his tendency to erect false gods and encounter inevitable frustration as he seeks to satisfy the soul's thirst for God with imperfect substitutes of the things of this world.
[...]36
"After passing through the dark gate the believing man steps forth into the everyday which is henceforth hallowed as the place in which he has to live with mystery."37 The believing Jew has looked sadness in the face. He knows that wife, the family, career, the daily tasks are not the ultimate "answer." But precisely because he has accepted their contingency can they have for him freshness and be a source of tempered joy. We can indeed experience the simple joys of life if we know their limitations beforehand. The cry of "vanity of vanities, all is vanity" comes as no surprise because we did not strain the simple joys with a burden they are not equipped to bear. We did not ask them to justify life for us. "Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice in the trembling." In summation: Judaism as a metaphysical system is optimistic, yet it recognizes fully the tragic character of human existence. On the existential level, it fosters sobriety and shifts the locus of anxieties to the areas that count – concern for the state of one's soul and one's relationship to God. Those who repress their thirst for the spirit expose themselves to futile frustrations and suffer the unmitigated consequences of man's naturally anxious condition. The mature religious personality who fixes his gaze on the infinite can, however, regain the finite in tempered joy. 

________________

NOTES 
* ''Despair of weakness" is the unwillingness to be oneself which results in the life of "pure immediacy." In this condition, the person looks at others in order to discover what he himself is and "recognizes himself by his dress." He becomes "an imitation, a number, a cipher in the crowd. He flees reflection, plunges into the outgoing, active life, and takes his cue from external circumstances. If he ever experiences self-reflection, it is thrust into forgetfulness or attributed to the instability of youth. In "despair of defiance" man wills to be himself but tries to overcome finitude on his own power. He attempts to create his "self" to his own specifications by sheer assertion of will. This is "the despairing abuse of the eternal in the self to the point of being despairingly determined to be oneself." In its final desperate form, this defiance turns into demoniac rage in which the despairer wills to be himself with his torment, which he believes constitutes a proof against the goodness of existence and thus he revolts and protests against the whole of existence. He will not hear of any help because comfort now "would be the destruction of him as an objection against existence and would rid him of his justification for being what he is." From this psychological analysis, Kierkegaard moves forward to theological considerations and asserts that "sin is the potentiation of despair before God." These analyses apply quite readily to well-known types in our own literature. The "despair of weakness" may well explain the "Disciples of Balaam" with their "evil eye, haughty spirit, and excessive desire" (Avot 5:22), or even he who "blesses himself in his heart saying, I will have peace". (Deut. 29: is), or the kesil who has all the knowledge but is lost in his "immediacy" (see commentary of Malbim on Proverbs 1:22), or those "whose stomachs have become their gods, and their clothing their Torah" (Chovot Ha-Levavot, Shaar ha-Perishut, Ch. 2). Those afflicted with the "despair of defiance" have a recognized niche in Jewish thought. This genre starts with Nimrod who "knows his Master but deliberately revolts against Him" (see Rashi on Gen. 10:9) and continues with the "stiff-necked ones." who persist in their ways though there be proof to the contrary" (see Seforno on Deut. 9:6) , and concludes with the "wicked ones who refuse to repent even on the threshold of Gehinnom" (Eruvin 19a). 
According to Tillich man's "ontic self-affirmation" as a created being is threatened from three directions, by "non-being." Awareness of this three-fold threat is anxiety appearing in three forms: threat of death; threat of emptiness or loss of meaning; threat of condemnation or guilt. In all of these the anxiety is existential, i.e. it belongs to man's nature. If we accept this analysis, then making man aware of his anxieties and the sources of his anxieties can perhaps bring him to the realization that he can overcome these anxieties only by "grounding himself in God".
It is not difficult to see that the Rabbis have consistently appealed to these three kinds of anxieties in attempting to bring about the experience of repentance. The entire Book of Kohelleth is an appeal to the emptiness of man's existence if it is lived only "under the sun." (See Shaarei Teshuvah of R. Jonah Gerondi, Shaar 2, paragraphs 19 and 20) . Remembrance of the day of one's death is suggested as a most potent stimulus for teshuvah (Berakhot 5), while the constant theme of the Prophets is to point to Israel's obligation, both collectively and individually, to God as "liberator from Egypt," as "Father and as Master," as "the Rock that begot thee," and "the God Who made thee," and the ingratitude with which Israel has responded. The purse of all of this is, of course, to generate a sense of guilt and remorse which is the first step towards Repentance (Maimonides Hil. Teshuvah 2:2). It is quite plausible that these three anxieties are implied in the dictum of R. Akavya ben Mahalel: ". . . You come from a fetid drop" – your existence, due essentially to egoistic sexuality, is thus meaningless. "You are going to a place of dust and worms" – the anxiety of death. And "before Whom are you destined to give judgement and reckoning – before the Almighty" – the anxiety of guilt (Avot 3:1) . 

1. Joshua Loth Liebman, Peace of Mind (N. Y.: Simon & Shuster 1946) pp. 165, 171. 
2. Ibid. p. 202. 
3. Abba Hilel Silver, Where Judaism Differed (N. Y.: MacMilan 1957) p.179. 
4. Ibid. p. 210. 
5. Walter Houston Clark, The Psychology of Religion (N. Y.: MacMilan 1958) p. J59. 
6. H. Rose, "Beyond Pessimism and Optimism" in Judaism, Spring 1957. 
7. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (N. Y.: Modern Library) pp. 77-163. 
8. Clark, op. cit., p. 155. 
9. Willam James. The Will to Believe (N. Y.: Dover Publications, 1956) p.32. 
10. James, Varieties, p.160. 
11. Ibid. p. 137. 
12. Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontents (London: Hogarlt Press, 1930) Chap. 2. 
13. James, Varieties, p. 141. 
14. Sidney Hook, "Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life" in Commentary, August 1960. 
15. T. W. Rosmarin, Jewish Survival (N. Y.: Philosophical Library, 1949) p.207. 
16. Ketubot 104a. See commentaries of Rashi and Tosafot. 
17. Rosmarin, op. cit., p. 210. 
18. Eruvin 13b. 
19. Genesis 32:8. 
20. Chagigah 13a. 
21. Dov Katz, Tenuat Ha-Mussar (Tel Aviv: Beitan Ha-Sefer, 1946) p. 269. 
22. Rudolph M. Loewenstein, Christians and Jews (N. Y.: Int. Universities Press, 1952) p. 139. 
23. M. Zborowski and E. Herzog, Life Is With People (N. Y.: Int. Universities Press, 1952) p. 411. 
24. Genesis 4:7. 
25. Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (N. Y.: Doubleday, 1954) pp. 182-207. 
26. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952) p.35. 
27. Fred Berthold, Jr., Fear of God (N. Y.: Harper, 1959) pp. 75, 90, 92.
    [text missing - from note 28 to 36] ... ...
28. Joseph Albo, Seter Ha-Ikkarim (Phila.: Jewish Publication Society, 1930) Vol. III p. 301. 
29. Rabbenu Nissim, Shneim Assar Derushim (Jerusalem: 1955) Derush 10, p. 69. 
30. Saadia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948) Treatise IX, Ch. 1., p. 324. 
31. Martin Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (N. Y.: Horizon Press, 1956) p. 37. 
32. Psalms 2:11. 
33. Albo, op. cit., p. 307; Judah Loewy, Netivot Olam (Tel Aviv: Pardes, 1956) Netiv Halitzanut, p. 167. See also the discussion in Berakhot 30. 
34. Martin Buber, Eclipse of God (N. Y.: Harper, 1952) p. 50. 
35. Alba, loc. cit.
36. [text missing] ... Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (N. Y.: Doubleday, 1954) p. 46.
37. Buber, loc. cit.