I am currently reading Marc Shapiro’s fascinating biography of Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, the Seridei Eish (Buy it here). An fascinating piece is Shapiro’s elucidation of R’Weinbergs view of belief. It is also interesting to note the similarities between R’ Weinbergs view and that of G. K. Chesterton, the famed English writer. Below is an extract from pages 74 – 75.
Believing that modern Hebrew literature was too important and influential for Orthodox thinkers to ignore, Weinberg began to write a series of essay on in, though only two installments actually appeared. Weinbergs essay on Micha Joef Berdyczewski (1865 – 1921) includes a number of fascinating points which, unfortunately, were never fully developed. All that is left are a few glimpses of what could have been some very refreshing thoughts on the nature of faith in the modern world.
The figure of Berdyczewski was bound to be fascinating to the Orthodox, for this wrings include, at one and the same time, the most strident opposition to tradition as well as an apparent pride in it. Not surprisingly, this characteristic has often been discussed in scholarly studies of the author. As Weinberg put it, the key to Berdyczewski is his ‘Jewish Heresy’. Weinberg believed that this heresy arose from the same source as the holy, and was actually the result of deep spiritual longing. Furthermore, just as distinction must be made between the base heresy of the masses and the profound heresy of thinkers such as Berdyczewski, Weinberg argued that the same is true with regard to the opposite pole to heresy, namely belief. In his mind, belief which is characterized by calm and fulfillment is actually a sign of inner emptiness and lack of thought. A man with such feelings is a believer only because he does not have the strength to deny, and such ‘belief’ or rather lack of denial, can never be the source of creativity. True belief, which is both religious and creative, is also stormy and turbulent and has nothing in common with passive fulfillment.
The way Weinberg expressed himself on these latter points bears such similarity to the ideas of G.K Chesterton that one must wonder whether Weinberg had read the latter’s Orthodoxy, which had appeared in German translation in 1909. For example, in the following famous passage we find Chesterton making the same point as Weinberg, in his own inimitable style:
The figure of Berdyczewski was bound to be fascinating to the Orthodox, for this wrings include, at one and the same time, the most strident opposition to tradition as well as an apparent pride in it. Not surprisingly, this characteristic has often been discussed in scholarly studies of the author. As Weinberg put it, the key to Berdyczewski is his ‘Jewish Heresy’. Weinberg believed that this heresy arose from the same source as the holy, and was actually the result of deep spiritual longing. Furthermore, just as distinction must be made between the base heresy of the masses and the profound heresy of thinkers such as Berdyczewski, Weinberg argued that the same is true with regard to the opposite pole to heresy, namely belief. In his mind, belief which is characterized by calm and fulfillment is actually a sign of inner emptiness and lack of thought. A man with such feelings is a believer only because he does not have the strength to deny, and such ‘belief’ or rather lack of denial, can never be the source of creativity. True belief, which is both religious and creative, is also stormy and turbulent and has nothing in common with passive fulfillment.
The way Weinberg expressed himself on these latter points bears such similarity to the ideas of G.K Chesterton that one must wonder whether Weinberg had read the latter’s Orthodoxy, which had appeared in German translation in 1909. For example, in the following famous passage we find Chesterton making the same point as Weinberg, in his own inimitable style:
People have fallen into a foolish habit speaking of Orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and swat that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statutory and the accuracy of arithmetic… It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.