The Meaning of Religious Practice by Emmanuel Levinas: an Introduction and Translation

Abstract

Published for first time in 1937, Emmanuel Levinas's short article Meaning of Religious Practice is perhaps best characterized as pre-Talmudic. At this time, Levinas had not yet met prestigious master M. Chouchani, under whom he would undertake a serious study of Talmud. Although he cites mitzvot in an example, Levinas's reflection on religious practice in Judaism is not applied to categories of Halakha but rests instead on a phenomenological description of execution of ritual. In contrast to reformers of Judaism, Levinas does not conceive of ritual in purely utilitarian terms, that is, as good for personal hygiene, moral discipline, religious symbolism, and mental and emotional arousal. Nor does he understand it as expression of a purely subjective or private religious life, situated on margins of universal order of reason and nature. Levinas, this modern interpretation gets its plausibility only from nonessential features of ritual. The true meaning of Jewish religious practice lies elsewhere. Levinas argues that execution of a ritual constitutes an interruption of the natural attitude that we habitually adopt in our everyday dealings with things. The ritual suspends our natural tendency, for example, to eat indiscriminately, giving us moment for pause and benediction. In so doing, it makes world and everything in it exotic, altogether strange, and miraculous. What Greeks experienced at very heart of philosophy, namely, (to thaumaston [Wonder is feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in (Plato, Theatetus 155d)]), Levinas finds in world revealed by Jewish ritual: For Jew, by contrast, nothing is entirely familiar, entirely profane. To him, existence of things is something infinitely surprising. It strikes him as a miracle. He experiences wonder at every instant at fact-so simple and yet so extraordinary-that world is there. In final analysis, then, meaning (signification) or essence of Jewish religious practice is to be found in event