Historical Heresies and Modern Jewish Identity

Abstract

n The Heretical Imperative, Peter Berger argued that modernity, characterized as it is by a plurality of choices, necessarily embraces heresy, for heresy, as he defines it (going back hereisis in Greek) means to choose. In the Hellenistic oikumene, the word most commonly referred a faction or party, from which, in the letters of Paul, for example,1 it eventually developed the pejorative meaning of factionalism or sectarian disagreement. With the gradual emergence of an orthodox Church, heresy came mean dissent from dogma, and, indeed, orthodoxy constructed itself precisely by naming and categorizing heresies. Berger contrasts the world of with modernity in the following terms: For premodern man, heresy is a possibility-usually a rather remote one; for modern man, heresy typically becomes a necessity. Or again, modernity creates a new situation in which picking and choosing becomes an imperative.2 Berger's equation of secularism with heresy is a singularly interesting attempt describe the dialectic of modernization in religious terms. Yet it seems me fail, at least in the Jewish case, one that Berger himself quotes repeatedly. Jewish tradition does not conform his definition of tradition, the static character of which probably applies no historical tradition. Consequently, the relationship of modern Jews heresy is not quite the diametric opposite of tradition. Rabbinic culture, which represents tradition for Berger, certainly developed a concept of heresy and even a lexicon of terms (min, kofer, epikoros) by which label the heretic. But the process of marking the boundaries