Word: hartman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this vacuum that Hartman seeks to fill. The core problem, as he sees it, is biblically based. "The Bible is full of passion, zealousness and extremism," says Hartman. "You don't learn tolerance there. Joshua didn't convene an international peace conference. He just drove the pagans out. We must find a different way. Our task is to become rooted in the land without having to repudiate those who are religiously and ideologically different...
...Hartman's ally is Judaism's oral tradition, the Talmud, which itself mediates, or "corrects," biblical literalism. But then the question becomes, Who says what the tradition is? The answer is, Anyone who can make his interpretations stick. Too often authority is gained through raw political power, or compelled by blind allegiance to a religious sect. But sometimes, as in Hartman's case, interpretive validity is achieved through the simple force of intellect...
...Hartman's many interpretive "moves" (as he calls them), several are central to his argument. One is simply to remind Israelis that they themselves were once strangers in Egypt. Another is to recall that Moses enjoined the Jews to be a holy people -- rather than declare that they already were. Most important for Hartman is the story of Creation, the Bible's very first tale, the one that precedes God's designation of Israel as His chosen people. "God created every human being in his image," says Hartman, "including Palestinians. Creation is what takes the Jews out of their...
...Hartman, then, nothing is more destructive to human growth than the + mistaken belief that if a people does not have everything (i.e., all the land), it has nothing. The issue for him is whether Jews can say grace without being totally satisfied. Even more important, the question is whether religious loyalty requires believing that there is only one way. Or does Judaism affirm that no human community has access to the total truth? In responding to these questions, says Hartman, "the most profound Jewish values are at stake. Israel cannot claim the allegiance of Jews everywhere if the spiritual content...
...Hartman's own life in Israel is quite comfortable. Women study at his institute -- something the ultras would never allow -- but if he has ever pushed a broom at home, his wife cannot recall when. He does jog three miles daily and is a lifetime private in the Israeli army's education corps, although he has never shot a gun. Most of his travel is work-related, but he escapes annually for a month in Switzerland, a country he loves because "even the trees aren't Jewish." Hartman is still a basketball fanatic, and he rarely misses the American games...