Judaism and the Origins of Erich Fromm's Humanistic ...

Judaism and the Origins ofErich Fromm’s HumanisticPsychologyThe Religious Reverence of a HereticNoam SchimmelHebrew College

This article explores the Jewish roots of Erich Fromm’s humanistic psychol-ogy: its ethical values, conception of human nature, and societal aspirations.It analyzes key concepts in Fromm’s humanistic psychology that have Jewishantecedents, including biophilia, the rejection of idolatry and group narcis-sism, moral universalism, and free will. It explicates Fromm’s major workaddressing Judaism and humanistic psychology, You Shall Be as Gods: ARadical Interpretation of the Old Testament and its Tradition, along withother texts written by Fromm that address Judaism and interpret it with a sec-ular, humanistic orientation. The article examines how Fromm situates theBible, the Talmud, and various rabbinic texts in relation to the developmentof Jewish civilization, its liberal humanistic philosophy, and the universalrelevance of these texts and the values that they transmit.

Keywords: Judaism; Fromm; prophets; social justice; universalism; idolatry

My interest and my love of the Jewish tradition has never died and nobodycan talk to me for any length of time who will not hear a Talmudic or Hasidicstory. . . . I am still strongly rooted in this tradition which I love in spite of

Journal of HumanisticPsychology

Volume 49 Number 1January 2009 9-45

© 2009 Sage Publications10.1177/0022167808319724

http://jhp.sagepub.comhosted at

http://online.sagepub.com

9

Author’s Note: The author wishes to thank Dr. Barry Mesch and the students of the Spring2007 Graduate Research Seminar at Hebrew College for suggestions and support during theresearch and writing of this article. The author also wishes to thank Professor StevenCopeland, formerly of Hebrew College, who served as an adviser for his feedback and men-torship. His creativity, compassion, generosity, imagination, and humanistic and Jewish ethi-cal commitments have been an ongoing source of inspiration. I am deeply grateful for histeaching and his friendship. His wisdom and kindness are wellsprings of strength and guid-ance in my life. Finally, this article and my encounter with humanistic psychology were madepossible by Yochanan Ress, who introduced me to Erich Fromm and to psychology. For hisfriendship, openness, hospitality, tremendous warmth and humor, and humanistic and Jewishspirit which he actualizes in a most exceptional and compelling fusion, I am grateful.

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 18, 2016jhp.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://jhp.sagepub.com/

the fact that I have separated myself from all its practice and even from anyparticipation in Jewish religion or any other form of Jewish life.

From personal correspondence (quoted in Lundgren, 1998, p. 119)

God becomes what he potentially is in monotheistic theology, the namelessOne, an inexpressible stammer, referring to the unity underlying the phenom-enal universe, the ground of all existence; God becomes truth, love, justice.

Fromm, 1956

Erich Fromm found within the Jewish prophetic tradition deep well-springs for his humanistic values and psychology. He was born in 1900 andwas raised in a modern Orthodox home in Frankfurt, Germany, and lived amodern Orthodox lifestyle, conforming to the laws of the Sabbath and fol-lowing a kosher diet into his twenties. He studied Tanach and Talmudextensively with his father and several rabbinic figures in the community asa child and a young adult, but did the bulk of his formal schooling at a sec-ular German school. Fromm pursued a doctorate on the sociology ofDiaspora Judaism, analyzing Reform Judaism, Hasidism, and Karaism atthe University of Heidelberg, earning his doctorate in 1922 (Lundgren,1998, pp. 82-92).

One of the Jewish teachers who had the profoundest impact on Fromm,named Salman Baruch Rabinkow, was an Orthodox Jew whose influenceFromm stated at several points in his life in letters to friends greatlyinformed the development of his humanistic psychology and Fromm’s per-sonal identity. Fromm said in a letter to a friend that Rabinkow was “strictlya man of halacha but I never heard him speak about God or in any ‘theo-logical’ terms” (Lundgren, 1998, p. 80). (Halacha is Jewish law, developedand explicated in the Talmud and various rabbinic texts and considered reli-giously binding by Orthodox and some Conservative Jews.) In a letter toRabinkow’s widow, Fromm stated that although he no longer observedJewish rituals, Judaism remained a part of him, and “that an essential partof his development was due to the influence of Rabinkow.” (Lundgren,1998, p. 80) Fromm’s deep respect for an Orthodox Jew and for the tradi-tional religion that he practiced, however unconventionally—in thatRabinkow rarely spoke of God—illuminates the rich and complex relation-ship that Fromm had with Judaism.

Although in his own life Fromm did not embrace halacha as setting nor-mative standards for his behavior after his mid-20s, in his writings heembraced the broad moral teachings contained within Biblical, Talmudic,

10 Journal of Humanistic Psychology



and Maimonidean texts. Hasidic stories also attracted his interest, and in anumber of his works he made positive reference to their moral foundations.(Fromm, 1950, pp. 47-48; Fromm, 1966, pp. 79-81) Fromm’s personal rela-tionship with Judaism would in some ways mirror how he perceivedRabinkow’s: one that is unconcerned with theology but that is deeply com-mitted to a particular ethically oriented way of living and being, literally, ahumanistic halicha (way of walking or being).

At the age of 26, Fromm gave up religious ritual observance andOrthodox religious convictions and ceased to be a theist. (Lundgren, 1998,p. 80) He would be an impassioned secularist for the rest of his life, but oneunconcerned with trying to actively convince others to become secular. ForFromm it was sufficient that people, secular and religious alike, could cometo share the same ethical values and act on them, irrespective of their faith(or lack thereof) and conception of divinity. Although he left the formalpractice of Judaism and its communal and ritual obligations at a relativelyyoung age, he remained throughout his life profoundly respectful of andlearned in the Bible and the Talmud. He showed great interest in, and per-sonal appreciation for and identification with Jewish teachings.Interspersed throughout Fromm’s many works on humanistic psychologyare references to Biblical and Talmudic ideas and texts, and reflections ontheir ethical orientation, contemporary relevance, and relationship toFromm’s humanistic project. Regarding the Bible’s influence on his think-ing Fromm said,

I am not a theist. Yet, to me, it is an extraordinary book, expressing manynorms and principles that have maintained their validity throughout thousandsof years. It is a book which has proclaimed a vision for men that is still validand awaiting realization. . . . It expresses the genius of a people strugglingfor life and freedom throughout many generations. (Fromm, 1966, p. 14)

Most of Fromm’s writings do not address Judaism or the Bible in depth, butthey present a number of consistently recurring themes which Frommstrongly linked in his writings on humanistic psychology to the valuesespoused in the Prophets, and, though to a lesser extent, in the Talmud andother rabbinical texts as well. These include: the sanctity of life; free will; theprinciples of justice and peace; respect for the natural world; moral univer-salism and egalitarianism; and a passionate commitment to just forms of gov-ernance that do not engage in violence as primary means of social control.

For Fromm, each of these Jewish principles is a shared principle of hishumanistic psychology. Fromm’s explication of these principles will be

Schimmel / Erich Fromm’s Humanistic Psychology 11



examined later in this article. Fromm conceptualized them in relation to thepathologies of human nature that he defined and categorized as a series ofinterconnected psychosocial phenomena: narcissism and the amorality andimmorality that it inspires; incestuous ties to land and people that manifestthemselves in extreme nationalism, chauvinism, and violence againstminorities; idolatry of the false values of power, materialistic consumptionand hedonistic pleasure; and necrophilia, the pursuit of violence and killingand the glorification of power, especially targeting the poor, the vulnera-ble, and the stranger.

The aim of this article is not to attempt to assess the veracity of Fromm’sclaims about the ethical character and content of the Bible and the “Jewishtradition” as being steeped in a liberal, egalitarian, and universalistic ethos.1

Rather, it aims to examine the relationship between Fromm’s ideas as a sec-ular humanistic psychologist and many prominent ideas and moral valuesfound in the Prophets and in the Jewish tradition that Fromm uses to groundhis humanistic psychology. It will explore the way in which Fromm inter-prets Jewish texts to support the ethics and ethos of his humanistic psy-chology. Whether or not the Jewish tradition is as humanistically anduniversally oriented as Fromm claims is a subject that Fromm himselfacknowledges cannot be answered easily or definitively, with no authorita-tive conclusion that all would necessarily find convincing.

In the introduction to You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation ofthe Old Testament and Its Traditions Fromm is careful to acknowledge thathis work is not a work of Biblical scholarship, but one of literary, cultural,and religious interpretation. This correctly characterizes not only You ShallBe as Gods, but the majority of Fromm’s writings about Judaism, whichhave been described, quite appropriately by some scholars, as forms ofmodern midrash. (Jewish interpretation of or commentary on a Biblicaltext, often creative and imaginative in nature, and not necessarily based onfact.) The purpose of midrash is to expound on Biblical stories and ideasand illuminate ethical and spiritual principles through narrative.(Petuchowski, 1956, p. 543) Fromm emphasizes his extensive Jewish edu-cational background as having provided the groundwork for his ideas andinterpretations, but recognizes that his writings represent a shift away froman Orthodox religious emphasis on theism.

Although I am not a specialist in the field of biblical scholarship, this bookis the fruit of many years of reflection, as I have been studying the OldTestament and the Talmud since I was a child. Nevertheless, I would not havedared to publish these comments on Scripture were it not for the fact that I




received my fundamental orientation concerning the Hebrew Bible and laterJewish tradition from teachers who were great rabbinical scholars. All ofthem were representatives of the humanistic wing of the Jewish tradition, andstrictly observing Jews. (Fromm, 1966, pp. 12-13)

However radical Fromm is in his Biblical interpretations, he positions him-self as a student of rabbinic scholars, all of whom led traditionally obser-vant lives, and whose reverence for Jewish texts, religion, and teachingswas profound. It is a reverence, that though different in its specific con-tours, Fromm shares.

Fromm’s analyses of the Bible often focus on its most liberal elements,although he typically acknowledges when he is building his humanisticethics by selectively picking from the Bible, and emphasizing the moralarguments that are closest to his own humanistic philosophy. He notes thatwithin the Bible there are different conceptions of God and of ethics thatinclude both democratic and egalitarian elements and authoritarian andchauvinistic ones. However, he believes that the dominant message of theBible and of the Prophets in particular is a liberal humanistic one. He states,“The spirit of the law, as it was developed by the rabbis through the cen-turies, was one of justice, brotherly love, respect for the individual, and thedevotion of life to one’s human development” (Fromm, 1966, p. 193).Humanistic psychology places a profound emphasis on the autonomy of theindividual, and on the freedom and responsibility that stems from thatautonomy and the potential for joy and creativity that follows from exer-cising it. Fromm finds within Judaism the same central motivating princi-ple and a similar commitment to the pursuit of social and economic justice,freedom, and respect for the individual and for human diversity.

Fromm acknowledges that there has been a continuous tension betweenliberal and reactionary approaches to Judaism throughout the historicaldevelopment of Judaism.

In the period following the completion of the Old Testament, the contradic-tions lie not in the evolution from archaic to civilized life; they lie more inthe constant split between various opposing trends going through the wholehistory of Judaism from the destruction of the Temple to the destruction ofcenters of traditional Jewish culture by Hitler. This split is that betweennationalism and universalism, conservatism and radicalism, fanaticism andtolerance. (Fromm, 1966, pp. 10-11)

Aware of the fact that his analysis of the humanistic values of the Bible entailschoosing to emphasize the liberal aspects of the Bible, Fromm explains that




his aim is not to prove the fundamental liberalism of the Bible, but to illus-trate his personal understanding of the Bible’s moral currents and their rela-tionship to Jewish ethics generally. He does not want to offer a biased readingof the Bible, and is transparent in his interpretive predilections.

Interpretation of an evolutionary process means showing the development ofcertain tendencies that have unfolded in the process of evolution. This inter-pretation makes it necessary to select those elements that constitute the mainstream, or at least one main stream in the evolutionary process; this meansweighing certain facts, selecting some as being more and others less repre-sentative. . . . It would require a work of much greater scope to offer proofthat radical humanist thought is the one which marks the main stages of theevolution of the Jewish tradition. (Fromm, 1966, p. 12)

For Fromm, it is sufficient to demonstrate the central, repeated, and impas-sioned universalistic teachings in the Bible to prove his point that the gen-eral tendency of the Jewish tradition is emancipatory.

Fromm’s claims that some of the ultimate goals of Judaism are the even-tual transcendence of faith in a supernatural God, and exclusive faith inman’s reasoning and creative powers would be vigorously rejected, notincorrectly, by many Jews as heresy. However, Fromm’s explications ofBiblical and Talmudic passages, although often original and unconven-tional, also frequently align themselves comfortably with mainstreamJewish commentaries and teachings. He is careful not to manipulate anddistort for the sake of advancing his humanistic biblical interpretationswhich are well grounded in text, even as they posit principles and ideas thathave not necessarily been well integrated into mainstream Jewish religiouspractice and Jewish cultural and religious self-perception.

Fromm’s presentation of the story of Jonah, in the Art of Loving, forexample, in which he describes Jonah as a man “with a strong sense oforder and law, but without love” (Fromm, 1956, p. 98) does not represent asignificant departure from classical accounts of the significance of thestory. Fromm explains that Jonah’s harsh commitment to an abstract notionof justice and his anger at God for showing mercy to the people of Ninevehis the cause of God’s punishment of Jonah. He goes on to state that God’sresponse to Jonah, in which he berates Jonah for his merciless attitudetoward the people of Nineveh illuminates an ethic of respect for creativeproduction and for life itself which the Bible wishes to convey, and that isalso a core value of his humanistic psychology. Commenting on God’sberating Jonah for the pity that he has on the gourd which protected Jonahfrom the heat but then wilted—but which Jonah had no part in creating and




which is a mere plant—he explains that Jonah refuses to understand whyGod would have pity on an entire human community that initially violatedHis will. Fromm states, “God’s answer to Jonah is to be understood sym-bolically. God explains to Jonah that the essence of love is to “labor” forsomething and to “make something grow,” that love and labor are insepa-rable.” God has pity on the people of Nineveh in part because he lovesthem; they are a product of his own creativity. Although this is not a tradi-tional interpretation of the text, neither is it necessarily at odds with classi-cal interpretations. Fromm links the significance of the Biblical story withan ethic for modern times by which we are to learn to emulate God’s behav-ior and to reject Jonah’s. He highlights Jonah’s lack of responsibility, hisunwillingness to act like God, who responded to the changed behavior ofthe people of Nineveh, and showed love and care for them by acknowledg-ing it and acting toward them with compassion, rather than insisting on anarrow application of justice.

Fromm’s conception of Judaism bears similarities to that of ReformJudaism,2 in its emphases on social and economic justice; the Prophets andtheir message of ethical concern for minorities and weak individuals andcommunities; its ambivalence toward Zionism;3 and its allegiance with lib-eral politics. (Which for Fromm, unlike Reform Judaism, included a pow-erful commitment to Marxism.) For Fromm, the aspects of Judaism that arenationalistic, ritualistic, and overly particularistic in orientation are adulter-ations of his conception of Judaism.

The Jewish Law was very undogmatic and so is Judaism. The Karaites werethe first to create dogmas within Judaism, and Maimonides was the first tomake a dogmatic system. But the Jewish people was not influenced by thedogmatic efforts of some of its teachers. (Lundgren, 1998, p. 82)

Read narrowly, there are many problems with this claim. It is extraordinar-ily broad, and it is not supported with evidence. What exactly does Frommmean when he says that halacha was very undogmatic? He might be refer-ring to the halachic process, which incorporates pluralistic rabbinical view-points, and involves a great deal of discussion and debate in an atmosphereof relative openness as it develops Jewish Law. Surely, the results of thehalachic process, the codification of halacha, could indeed be defined asbeing dogmatic in nature. Halachic rulings were never considered to beoptional by the rabbis that established them; nor were they establisheddemocratically or in an egalitarian manner; and they aimed to influence allaspects of Jewish life, in a totalizing manner that brooked no extra-halachic




dissent. Furthermore, to argue that the Jewish people was “not influencedby the dogmatic efforts of some of its teachers” is to confuse Fromm’s idealvision of Judaism with the less than perfect historical reality. Inevitably,many Jews were influenced by the dogmatism of some rabbis and remaininfluenced by this dogmatism today. It has always been a feature of Judaismand is, perhaps, an inevitable component of any organized religion, whichseeks to maintain a shared commitment to a particular set of principles,behaviors, and communal norms.

However, reading Fromm further, one recognizes that in making theseassertions he is in fact extremely sensitive to the context in which Judaismdeveloped. He is not holding Biblical and Talmudic Judaism to the standardsof today’s liberal democracies and modern human rights laws. Rather, he isnoting that there were significant and uniquely liberal elements to the devel-opment of halacha, and to the very notion of it as a whole that render it,within the social, political, and religious context in which it developed, rad-ically progressive. In this regard, Fromm makes three philosophical and eth-ical observations about halacha: its nonelitist character and its popularpurposes; the principle of equality on which it is predicated; and the none-goistic and non-power-hoarding character of the halacha. Fromm explainsthat halacha’s goal is not self-directed primarily toward its own preserva-tion, but toward the achievement of a holistic way of life to be shared by allJews, irrespective of their economic, social, or religious position.

The Jewish Law, which demands certain acts not beliefs, is meant for thewhole community, not for a certain group or certain individuals. That theLaw is equal for everyone is a sign of democracy. The Law wants to givepeople the chance to reach the goal, it is not a goal in itself. Therefore it iscalled halacha, a way. The law wants to change the surrounding world(Umwelt) first. This is shown by the Sabbath commandment. It does not sayin what mood a Jew should celebrate the Sabbath, but it gives detailed pre-scriptions about what to do and not to do. (Lundgren, 1998, pp. 82-83)

This observation about the Sabbath is particularly important, because itillustrates one of Fromm’s central principles of humanistic psychology, thecentrality of man’s active involvement in and responsibility for finding andcreating meaning and purpose in his life. The halacha is not dogmatic in thesense that it provides ample freedom for an adherent of Jewish law to expe-rience certain Jewish rituals, such as the spiritual and sensual immersionexperience of the Sabbath, in a manner that reflects his individuality. Thehalacha does, in fact, encourage Jews to celebrate the Sabbath in a mood ofenjoyment (oneg), but the halacha is more concerned, as Fromm writes,




with creating a psycho-social-religious framework in which this enjoymentcan be experienced, than in demanding pleasure as a form of surrender toGod’s emotional dictates. The aims of halacha are holistic and experiential,they are concerned with creating the conditions that enable the actualizationof certain emotional and religious states, not in focusing on statements offaith and narrow religious dogmas of belief that individuals must accept asa test of their faith and their membership in the Jewish community.

Fromm draws from Judaism not only with regard to ethics, but also inrelation to a broader vision of what makes for a creatively and existentiallysatisfying life, which is a major concern of his humanistic psychology. Heregards with great significance the fact that Judaism orients itself in a pos-itive way both to human beings, and their capacity for goodness, and withregard to the purpose of life itself, which he argues Judaism affirms is one ofthe joys that follows from commitment to work, religion, and spirituality.

Freedom in Fromm’s HumanisticPsychology and the Jewish Tradition

Fromm’s book, You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of theOld Testament and its Tradition, the only work of Fromm’s that compre-hensively applies a humanistic interpretation to Jewish texts and thataddresses Judaism in great detail, will form a core component of this expli-cation of Fromm’s humanistic psychology and its similarities to Judaism.The values and principles of humanistic psychology were not born in a vac-uum, nor were they primarily inspired by the Enlightenment. By fusingJudaism and humanistic psychology, Fromm brings both the spirit and thecontents of Judaism and of the Prophets in particular into the intellectualmainstream of the 20th century—and the field of psychology.

Perhaps the single subject matter that most concerns Fromm is freedomand its moral implications: man’s capacity to choose between good andevil, peace and war, cruelty and violence, and kindness and compassion. Arecurring theme of Fromm’s writing is the ambivalence that man feels in theface of freedom, and the dangerous and often violent actions that man takesto reduce his freedom, and consequently, reduce the feelings of psycholog-ical anxiety that freedom and independence can cause.4 Fromm explainsthat when the Israelites left Egypt with God’s assistance they were afraid oftheir newfound freedom and sought to shirk the responsibility that accom-panies freedom.




They were afraid because they did not have the well-regulated and set exis-tence under which they had lived in Egypt—even though it was the life ofslaves—because they had no overseer and no king and no idols before whomthey could bow down. . . . Their security in Egypt as slaves appeared tothem far preferable to the insecurity of freedom. (Fromm, 1966, p. 109)

Maintaining the drive for freedom and the courage to partake of freedomeven when it is difficult, confusing, and demanding is a central element ofFromm’s humanistic psychology. Fromm finds the divine command to seekout freedom as a dominant motif in the Biblical description of the develop-ment of the Jewish people; from the radical and overwhelming freedom thatAbraham experiences when God tells him to “Lech Lecha”—to leave theland that he knows in pursuit of a new life in a new land where he will cre-ate a new people—to the wandering of the Jews in the desert on their wayto Canaan, and the freedom—of ultimate importance to Fromm—which ismade most clear in the Bible’s delineating of the Noachide laws and the TenCommandments; ethical freedom.

For Fromm, ethical freedom is tied to a willingness to free oneself of whatFromm considers to be incestuous and narcissistic ties to one’s immediatetribe, the land that one lives in and is most familiar with, and those parochialaspects of one’s identity that can lead one to justify cruelty or indifference tothose who are different, with whom one does not readily empathize nor feelmoral obligation. The Bible, Fromm argues, insists on liberating the Israelitesfrom such incestuous and narcissistic ties, and still today, humanity faces thesame obligation to emancipate itself from these delusions.

The tribe, the nation, the race, the state, the social class, political parties, andmany other forms of institutions and organizations have become home andfamily. Here are the roots of nationalism and racism, which in turn are symp-toms of man’s inability to experience himself and others as free humanbeings. . . . The groupings to which man feels incestuously tied havebecome larger and the area of freedom has become greater, but the ties tothose larger units which substitute for the clan and the soil are still powerfuland strong. (Fromm, 1950, p. 81)

Fromm notes that the Jewish holidays of Passover and Sukkot commemo-rate the relationship between leaving one’s settled life in a particular placeand the concurrent pursuit of freedom and a new ethical or religious covenant.“The Sukkah . . . is a temporary abode, by living (or at least eating) inthe temporary abode the Jew makes himself again a wanderer. . . . Boththe matzot and the sukkah symbolize the cutting of the umbilical cord to the




soil” (Fromm, 1966, p. 72). Of all of the constricting factors on human free-dom, the temptations of ideologies of discrimination based on narrownational, religious, or other identity markers most trouble Fromm, whobelieves that they are the primary source of aggression, conflict, and vio-lence in human relations. For this reason, Fromm finds the Bible’s frequentrepetition of the command to respect the stranger as one of the shared coreprinciples of Judaism and his humanistic psychology.

The stranger is precisely the person who is not part of my clan, my family,my nation; he is not part of the group to which I am narcissistically attached.. . . In the love for the stranger narcissistic love has vanished . . . it meansloving another human being in his suchness and his difference from me, andnot because he is like me. (Fromm, 1964, p. 89)

When a person is able to love another in this way, embracing and acceptinghis difference, rather than recoiling from it in fear, disgust, or hatred—ordesiring to forcibly change that person or marginalize and oppress him,then he has liberated himself from the worst forms of narcissism and“incestuous attachment.”

Fromm’s concept of “incest” is substantially more expansive than thetraditional definition referring to sexual relations with family members, andencompasses any obsessive fixation on one’s primary tribal, national, or othersuch loyalties, and thus is intimately related to his conception of narcissism.Indeed, Fromm sees the command to dissolve incestuous ties as a unifyingmoral and spiritual imperative within the Bible, a prerequisite for the exer-cise of human freedom and the realization of Prophetic values.

The demand to sever the ties of blood and soil runs through the entire OldTestament. Abraham is told to leave his country and become a wanderer.Moses is brought up as a stranger in an unfamiliar environment away fromhis family and even from his own people. The condition for Israel’s missionas God’s chosen people lies in their leaving the bondage of Egypt and wan-dering the desert for forty years. After having settled down in their owncountry, they fall back into the incestuous worship of the soil, of idols, andof the state. The central issue of the teaching of the Prophets is the fightagainst this incestuous worship. They preach instead the basic valuescommon to all mankind, those of truth, love, and justice. They attack the stateand those secular powers which fail to realize these norms. The state mustperish if man becomes tied in such a way that the welfare of the state, itspower and its glory become the criteria of good and evil. . . . Only if onehas outgrown incestuous ties can one judge one’s own group critically; onlythen can one judge at all. (Fromm, 1950, p. 84)




Truth and justice then are dependent on breaking the narrow bonds of attach-ment that chain human beings to limited and limiting forms of identity thatcan only be sustained through illusions of human separateness and spuriousbeliefs in the legitimacy of maintaining inequality in the human family.

Fromm is deeply concerned with social and economic justice, and in par-ticular, with the well-being of the most marginalized members of humancommunities—the poor, minorities, and any vulnerable population left out ofthe mainstream of social concern.5 Echoing the Prophets, Fromm reflects onhuman moral responsibilities to these individuals and communities in relationto the concept of free will. He insistently dismisses God’s power to direct orchange humanity’s choices, and consequently implores human beings tomake the right choices, because he does not believe that there is a divine forcethat will act as a correcting mechanism to human ignorance, greed, aggres-sion, and folly. Fromm highlights the role of free will in his interpretation ofGod’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, in the story of the Exodus.

In the essential point, however, to make the people—or Pharaoh—ready forfreedom, God does not interfere at all. Pharaoh remains as he is; hence hebecomes worse—his heart “hardens”; the Hebrews do not change either.Again and again they try to escape from freedom, to return to Egyptian slav-ery and security. God does not change their heart, nor does he changePharaoh’s heart. He lets man alone—lets him make history, lets him work outhis own salvation. (Fromm, 1963, p. 207)

The language of Fromm’s humanistic psychology—like that of theProphets—is a language of imperatives and responsibilities. It is a languageof demands made not through threat or use of power of an all knowing andall-powerful God. Rather, it is made through the voice—by turns thunder-ing and gentle, confident and unsure—of the human conscience strugglingto hear itself and free itself from the temptations of greed, coercive power,and aggression, of the perverse pleasures of submission and servility, andthe consequent abnegation of the responsibility that stems from having aconscience and the capacities to reason, empathize, and to love.

Fromm values religion inasmuch as it promotes humanistic values thatnurture freedom, creativity, and human development. Religion itself, as adogmatic system of beliefs and practices sanctioned by particular authori-ties profoundly troubles Fromm. For Fromm, religions deserving of respectare not primarily concerned with their own perpetuation and with ritualpractice, but with the realization of transcendent moral values which hebelieves to be ultimate values. Fromm makes an essential distinction




between authoritarian and humanistic religions that informs his interpreta-tions of Jewish texts and the Jewish values that he emphasizes.

Authoritarian religions are characterized by the concept of a higher poweroutside man to which man should show obedience, reverence and worship;humanistic religions are centered on man and his possibility. Virtues inhumanistic religions are strength and self-realization, in authoritarian reli-gions powerlessness and subservience. The prevailing mood in humanisticreligions is that of joy, in authoritarian religions that of sorrow and guilt.While humanistic religion is characterized by humility, authoritarian religionis characterized by self-humiliation. In authoritarian religion man humiliateshimself by projecting everything good on God and feels evil himself, a totalsinner. (Lundgren, 1998, p. 1998)

According to these standards, Fromm argues, Judaism falls squarely in thehumanistic camp of religions. Why this is so and how Fromm supports thisclaim will be explored later in this article, particularly in relation to the dif-ferences that Fromm outlines between Judaism and Christianity, andChristian and specifically Protestant concepts of predetermination, originalsin, and salvation through faith in God, rather than through one’s behaviortoward God and one’s fellow man.

The Principles of Universalism andEquality in Fromm’s Humanistic Psychology

In the preface to You Shall Be as Gods Fromm defines his humanisticphilosophy that finds inspiration in the Bible and from which it draws someof its principle ideas.

The interpretation of the Bible given in this book is that of radical humanism.By radical humanism I refer to a global philosophy which emphasizes theoneness of the human race, the capacity of man to develop his own powersand to arrive at inner harmony and at the establishment of a peaceful world.Radical humanism considers the goal of man to be that of complete inde-pendence, and this implies penetrating through fictions and illusions to a fullawareness of reality. It implies, furthermore, a skeptical attitude toward theuse of force, precisely because during the history of man it has been, and stillis, force—creating fear—which has made man ready to take fiction for real-ity, illusions for truth. It was force which made man incapable of indepen-dence and hence warped his reason and emotions. (Fromm, 1966, p. 14)




Fromm considers the ethically unjustified use of force as a form of idolatryof power and betrayal of the ethical values espoused by the Prophets andattributed to God. He attributes its usage to its related psychosocial patholo-gies that often accompany the human desire to use coercion and violence toachieve particular desired ends. These include, as discussed earlier: nation-alism and the discrimination that it can prompt, and fear of difference andthe desire to coercively root out all sources of diversity within a givensociety. According to Fromm, the patterns of oppression and exploitationthat were historically so common in Biblical times, informed in large partby authoritarian values and exclusivist attitudes toward control of land andnatural resources were vigorously challenged by the Bible and revealed asbeing an active blasphemy toward divine values and intentions. “The OldTestament is a revolutionary book; its theme is the liberation of man fromincestuous ties to blood and soil, from the submission to idols, from slav-ery, from powerful masters, to freedom for the individual, for the nation,and for all of mankind” (Fromm, 1966, p. 7).6

For Fromm, the dictum of Hillel, the great rabbinic sage, that “theessence of the Torah is the command: Do not do unto others as you shouldnot want them to do unto you—the rest is commentary. Go and study,” is aspringboard for the ethics of humanistic psychology and its emphasis onfreedom, autonomy, and the rights of all people to live under conditions ofrespect and equality.7 In The Art of Loving, Fromm traces the ethics ofKant’s Formula of Humanity, that people should be treated as ends in them-selves and never as means for the ends of another person, and theEnlightenment values of freedom and equality to the Talmud, and theBiblical values that it builds on.

Equality had meant, in a religious context, that we are all God’s children andthat we all share in the same human-divine substance, that we are all one. Itmeant also that the very differences between individuals must be respected,that while it is true that we are all one, it is also true that each of us is a uniqueentity, is a cosmos by itself. Such conviction of the uniqueness of the indi-vidual is expressed for instance in the Talmudic statement: “Whosoever savesa single life is as if he had saved the whole world; whosoever destroys a sin-gle life is as if he destroyed the whole world.” (Fromm, 1956, p. 14)

The Art of Loving, like most of Fromm’s books, is written for a broadaudience of people of all faiths and no faith, and has minimal Jewish con-tent. That Fromm makes reference to the Talmud in a passage aboutKantian ethics and the Enlightenment, and the human rights that followfrom Kant’s writings and those of Enlightenment thinkers demonstrates the




centrality of Jewish sources in his own ethical thinking and in his under-standing of the development of ethical norms in the West. Expanding on thetheme of universalism in the Bible, Fromm points out that the covenantbetween Noah and God is emblematic of Judaism’s concern with humanlife universally.

It is important to note that the first covenant (in the final editing of the Bible)is one between God and mankind, not between God and the Hebrew tribe.The history of the Hebrews is conceived as only a part of the history of man;the principle of “reverence for life” precedes all specific promises to one par-ticular tribe or nation. (Fromm, 1966, p. 25)

This initial covenant between God and humanity is of great significanceto Fromm because it establishes the parameters of action for both humans andGod, and obligates both God and humanity to act in accordance with the eth-ical principle of the sanctity of human life. Through this covenant, humanityis empowered to challenge God, to remind him of his commitments tohumankind. The relationship between God and humanity, which, asdescribed in the story of Adam and Eve entails powerlessness and servility onthe part of humanity is radically redefined: Humanity becomes a partner withGod, a creature who shares divine ethics and a keeper of a divine covenant.

God is transformed. . . . He is bound, as man is bound, to the conditions ofthe constitution. God has lost his freedom to be arbitrary, and man has gainedthe freedom of being able to challenge God in the name of God’s ownpromises, of the principles laid down in the covenant. There is only one stip-ulation, but it is fundamental: God obliges himself to absolute respect for alllife, the life of man and all other living creatures. The right of all living crea-tures to live is established as the first law, which not even God can change.(Fromm, 1966, p. 25)

Fromm was an impassioned antinationalist, rejecting the concept of thenation-state, and he rejected it as vigorously with regard to Zionism as hedid with regard to other national liberation movements. (Perhaps evenmore so with regard to Zionism, as he regarded Zionism as a betrayal ofthe moral universalism he argued was a central principle of Judaism.)8 It isnot surprising then that Fromm should celebrate the principles of equalityand universality within the Jewish tradition, and in particular, the fact thatGod’s first and perhaps most fundamental covenant is made with Noah onbehalf of all humanity, and not on behalf of one particular national religiousgroup who become the Jewish people.




In You Shall Be as Gods and in The Dogma of Christ, Fromm quotesfrom Biblical passages that elucidate the powerful and unrestrained univer-salistic orientation of the Prophets. “Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,O people of Israel?, says the Lord. Did I not bring up Israel from the landof Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?”(Fromm, 1963, p. 212). From Isaiah, Fromm quotes the description of theMessianic era which Isaiah describes as being a time of coexistence, shar-ing, and equality, and not one of Jewish chosenness or superiority.

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrianwill come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians willworship with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt andAssyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts hasblessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of myhands, and Israel, my heritage.” (Fromm, 1963, p. 212)

Fromm argues on several occasions in You Shall Be as Gods that the moraluniversalism of Judaism stems in large part from the historical experiencethat the Israelites and later the Jews had of being a vulnerable and perse-cuted minority, often wandering, helpless and homeless. Through this expe-rience they and their prophets were sensitized to the plight of the weak andmost vulnerable populations, to those at the margins of society and outsideof the immediate sphere of social concern.

The Prophets applied the lessons learned from the experience of theIsraelites being a weak and defenseless people—literal strangers—able tosurvive only at the whims of other peoples’ attitudes toward them. Empathybecame a fundamental basis for Jewish ethics. The Bible emphasizesrepeatedly and forcefully to treat the stranger that dwells amongst theIsraelites with kindness and respect, as the Israelites were once strangersthemselves. That the universalistic teachings of Judaism survived andthrived, Fromm argues, is of great significance because they were tested bythe Jewish people’s historically negative experiences with other peoples.Fromm recognizes, however, that many of the parochial and authoritarianaspects of the Jewish tradition stem from the Jewish experience of perse-cution as well, which also fostered insularity, rooted in large part in fear ofother peoples who could be potentially threatening. However, he believesthat the overall effect of this marginalization was not to make the Jews anembittered, anxiety stricken, parochial, and power-obsessed nation seekingto protect itself from others, but a nation rightly skeptical of the tantalizingbut ultimately deadly Siren song of coercive and violent expressions of




power and chauvinism. Fromm once remarked in an interview toward theend of his life on the historical experience of being a stranger in relation tothe development of Jewish Biblical ethics,

I feel glad to have this experience as the Old Testament once said: “Love thestranger because you know the soul of the stranger for you have been astranger in Egypt.” One can really understand the stranger only if one hasbeen thoroughly a stranger and being a stranger means one is at home in thewhole world. (Lundgren, 1998, p. 77)

Illustrating the moral universalism within Judaism in You Shall Be as Gods,Fromm also quotes the Talmudic tale from Sanhedrin, 39b that at themoment when the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea as a result ofGod’s actions to save the Israelites “the ministering angels wished to utterthe song [of praise] before the Holy One Blessed Be He, but he rebukedthem saying: My handiwork [the Egyptians] is drowning in the sea, and youwould utter song before me?” (Fromm, 1966, p. 85). For Fromm, passagessuch as these demonstrate that Talmudic commentary, however focused onGod’s unique covenant with the Jewish people is aware of and promotes alarger ethical framework that values all human life and all of God’s cre-ation, and warns against discriminatory attitudes toward non-Jews.

The Prophets are a primary source of universalistic ethics that Frommrefers to in You Shall Be as Gods and in other works of his that make men-tion of Judaism. They have significance for Fromm not only because theyespouse moral ideals that, in their universalism and emphasis on ethicsrather than ritual resemble his humanistic psychology and that are not pre-occupied with theological dogmas, but also because according to Fromm theexistence of The Prophets reflects one of the key principles of Judaism: thathumans are fundamentally free and must exercise choice throughout theirlives. The prophets warn of the negative consequences of poor choices, suchas submission to idols, but the gravitas of their language stems from theirconviction that the Israelites have full responsibility for their own choices.

Most of the great prophets from Amos onward are equally little concernedwith theological speculation. They speak of God’s actions, of his commandsto man, of his rewards and punishments, but they do not indulge in or encour-age any kind of speculation about God, just as they do not favor any ritual.(Fromm, 1966, p. 38)

The Prophets argue that man’s condition can be improved; he is not intrin-sically evil or sinful. His redemption cannot result primarily through his




faith, but through his actions, and his commitment to act in accordance withthe principles and laws of the Israelites and later of Judaism. According toFromm, God’s role is to provide an ethical framework for action throughhis teachings and through his messengers, the Prophets, but he does notforce humans to act in one way or another.

God’s role in history, according to Old Testament thought, is restricted to send-ing messengers, the prophets, who show man a new spiritual goal, show manthe alternatives between which he has to choose; and protest against all acts andattitudes through which man loses himself and the path to salvation. However,man is free to act; it is up to him to decide. He is confronted with the choicebetween blessing and curse, life and death. It is God’s hope that he will chooselife, but God does not save man by an act of grace. (Fromm, 1963, p. 205)

In On Disobedience Fromm describes the Prophets as individuals of highintegrity who became prophets not out of a desire to gain power but out of asincere interest in improving the community in which they were members.

They lived what they preached. They did not seek power, but avoided it. Noteven the power of being a prophet. They were not impressed by might, andthey spoke the truth even if this led them to imprisonment, ostracism ordeath. They were not men who set themselves apart and waited to see whatwould happen. They responded to their fellow men because they felt respon-sible. What happened to others happened to them. Humanity was not outside,but within them. Precisely because they saw the truth they felt the responsi-bility to tell it; they did not threaten, but they showed the alternatives withwhich man was confronted. (Fromm, 1981, p. 42)

For Fromm the Prophets are archetypes of moral excellence, mediatorsbetween divine values and ideals, and the practical realities of human exis-tence. Moreover, they are necessary sources of wisdom and inspiration fora people who have transformed themselves from a nation led by a smallpriestly hierarchy, during the time of the Temples, to one that God describesas becoming a “nation of priests.”

For Fromm, the giving of the Ten Commandments and the accompany-ing statement, “And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holynation” (Exodus 19:6) is of great importance in the ethical evolution of theIsraelites. In the process of this divine revelation, God affirms that eachIsraelite, individually, must assume responsibility for his own behavior andcollectively must ensure that communal religious and ethical standards asset forth in the Ten Commandments are enforced. This placing of freedom




and responsibility on the Israelites and democratic sharing of the power andobligations of priestliness coincides with Fromm’s emphases in his human-istic psychology on the interdependence of equality, freedom, individualmoral responsibility, and collective social obligation.

The Parable of Adam and Eve andthe Birth of Human Freedom

For Fromm, the autonomy of man to make moral and personal choicesnecessitates the use of one’s reasoning skills, and one’s capacity for empa-thy and compassion. He relates the human capacity to reason to the story ofAdam and Eve, arguing that their rebellion against God was in fact a pre-requisite for their freedom. He states that their rebellion was a reasonedone, whose significance rests in its liberating them from the constrictions offollowing the dictates of God, without developing their own reasoningcapacities. Without this rebellion, Fromm argues, humankind would not beable to make moral distinctions, nor would it have achieved a meaningfulunderstanding of the differences between the various aspects of God’s cre-ation, which include humanity itself and the natural world. For Fromm,understanding these differences is essential for humanity to achieve a wayof being and acting in the world that is meaningful and reflects its auton-omy, and its responsibility to protect the natural world in which it lives andon which it is dependent for sustenance.

Before Adam’s fall, that is, before man had reason and self-awareness, helived in complete harmony with nature. . . . They were separate, but theywere not aware of it. The first act of disobedience, which is also the begin-ning of human freedom, “opens his eyes,” man knows how to judge good andevil, he has become aware of himself and of his fellow man. . . . His firstsin, disobedience, is the first act of freedom; it is the beginning of history. Itis in history that man develops, evolves, and emerges. He develops his rea-son and his capacity to love. He creates himself in the historical process thatbegan with his first act of freedom, which was the freedom to disobey, to say“No.” (Fromm, 1963, pp. 203-205)

The significance of this story for Fromm is that it creates a basis for a moreequitable relationship between humanity and God. God’s power is limitedin that humanity can actually choose to rebel against him, and thus the ele-ment of authoritarianism that influences certain depictions of God withinthe first chapters of the Bible is moderated by humanity’s rebellion against




God. Fromm notes that later in the Bible, in situations such as Abraham’sargument with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, thatAdam and Eve’s violation of God’s commandment and thus their arrival atunderstanding good and evil forms the basis of human freedom and Jewishethics, which allows for confrontation and debate with God, indeed, ulti-mately requires it. As with many Biblical stories, the story of Adam andEve contains both authoritarian and emancipatory elements. Frommacknowledges this by challenging the conventional interpretation of thestory, as a critique of Adam and Eve’s violation of God’s commandments.

Because of this act of disobedience, Fromm argues that humanity dis-covers the significance of its own existence. Humans are able to becomemoral actors; they can imitate the ways of God by choosing to follow theethical and religious principles that God has proposed, rather than follow-ing them as automatons who fear an all-powerful God, but have no real loveor respect for him, nor faith in him, because their respect for God is merelythe function of intimidation and an expression of subservience, in sharpcontrast to the covenantal relationship that defines the relationship of theIsraelites and God later in the Bible.

Although man has “sinned” in the act of disobedience, his sinning becomesjustified in the historical process. He does not suffer from a corruption of hissubstance, but his very sin is the beginning of a dialectical process that endswith his self-creation and self-salvation. (Fromm, 1963, pp. 207-208)

The violation of God’s injunction not to eat from the fruit of the Garden ofEden is, paradoxically, Fromm insists, the necessary step in developing arelationship between humanity and God that is intimate and mutual, moti-vated by human love of and care for the divine rather than fear of God andsubmission to him.

Fromm analyzes the story of Adam and Eve with a focus not on human-ity’s betrayal of God, but on Adam’s betrayal of Eve, and the lack of unitybetween the two of them. Their alienation from each other, is indicative ofthe alienation toward which humanity so characteristically descends, butwhich Fromm believes can be transcended and surmounted through theapplication of humanistic values. Fromm argues that the shame that Adamand Eve experienced had nothing to do with nudity. Rather, it was a func-tion of their realizing that each is an individual, but that because there wasno real love between them they were isolated from one another. Rather thanshowing care for Eve, Adam blames her for the sin of disobedience(Lundgren, 1998, pp. 126-127). The significance of the Biblical story of




Adam and Eve then represents more than the rebellion of humankindagainst God, and the affirmation of human freedom and moral responsibil-ity in the process. It is significant in its critique of humankind, not so muchfor betraying God, as much as for betraying itself through the lack of loveand respect that Adam and Eve show each other.

The Messianic Era: A ConvergenceBetween Biblical and Humanistic Visions

Fromm similarly interprets Biblical passages about the coming of theMessiah in a manner that is human centered and focuses not on God, but oninterpersonal ethical obligations. He interprets the utopian visions associ-ated with the Messiah as referring not to the arrival of a powerful individ-ual granted through the grace of God to redeem the Jewish people, but anidealized symbol for a period of time and characteristic of society andhumanity that will actualize the prophetic vision of humanism, universal-ism, peace, and justice. Fromm’s interpretation of the ideal of the Messiahappears to be radical, but it has precedent in the Jewish tradition. Frommechoes Maimonides’s (1967) commentary on the concept of the Messiahand the Messianic era. Maimonides writes in his Commentary on theMishnah, Sanhedrin 10.1 that the Messianic era will not be ushered inthrough the supernatural exertions of God or a divine Messianic figure, butthrough the freedom of Jews and their commitment to live in accordancewith the principles of Judaism.

Nothing will change in the Messianic age, however, except that Jews will regaintheir independence. Rich and poor, strong and weak, will still exist . . . warshall not exist, and nation shall no longer lift up sword against nation. . . . TheMessianic age will be highlighted by a community of the righteous and domi-nated by goodness and wisdom. It will be ruled by the Messiah, a righteous andhonest king, outstanding in wisdom, and close to God. Do not think that the waysof the world or the laws of nature will change, this is not true. . . . The prophetIsaiah predicted “The wolf shall live with the sheep, the leopard shall lie downwith the kid.” This, however, is merely allegory, meaning that the Jews will livesafely, even with the formerly wicked nations. All nations will return to the truereligion and will no longer steal or oppress. . . . Our sages and prophets did notlong for the Messianic age in order that they might rule the world and dominatethe gentiles, the only thing they wanted was to be free for Jews to involve them-selves with the Torah and its wisdom. (Maimonides, 1967, 10:1)




Fromm’s humanistic interpretation of the Messianic era closely mirrorsMaimonides in that the era is not ushered in by a supernatural force, inFromm’s analysis of Biblical depictions of the Messianic era, but by ratio-nal human commitment to particular ethical principles; war will cease tooccur; wisdom and ethical decency will define public and religious life;exploitation and oppression will cease; and Jews will not seek to rule overother nations or force Judaism on them, on the contrary, they will existalongside them, practicing their own religion, while sharing the universalethical values common to all nations in the Messianic era. Freed from thebondage of irrational passions man will become ever more ethical in char-acter, more generous and tolerant of his fellow man, and less materialistic.The distinctions between nations and peoples and religions will becomeless relevant, and will be recognized as being superficial, and in no wayaffecting man’s moral obligations to his fellow man.

Although Fromm quotes Maimonides selectively in his works, focusingon the most radical and rationalist aspects of Maimonides’s thoughts, hedoes not ignore the conservative aspects of Maimonides’s teachings whichcontrast so sharply with his own and which have little in common withMaimonides’s nonsupernatural conceptualization of the Messiah and theMessianic era. He acknowledges the dogmatic aspects of Maimonides’steachings but stresses that they were never codified within Judaism.Reflecting on the status of Maimonides’s Thirteen Principles of FaithFromm writes,

What happened to these articles? Were they accepted as a dogma or as a beliefon which salvation depended? Nothing of the kind. They were never“accepted” or dogmatized—in fact, the most that has been made of them isthat in the traditional service of the Ashkenazi Jews they are sung in a poeticversion at the end of the evening service of holidays and Sabbaths, and amongsome Ashkenazi at the conclusion of morning prayers. (Fromm, 1966, p. 40)

Although Fromm does not dwell on the possible reasons for the widelydivergent teachings of Maimonides, he clearly believes that it is in workssuch as the Guide for the Perplexed that Maimonides’s most original, radi-cal, and significant contributions to Jewish and religious thought generallywere made, and these dovetail with his humanistic project.

[Maimonides] developed his negative theology which declares it to be inad-missible to use positive attributes to describe God’s essence (like existence,life, power, unity, wisdom, will and so on) although it is permissible toemploy attributes of actions with regard to God. (Fromm, 1966, p. 33)




For Fromm, Maimonides’s negative theology is an extremely significanttheological construct, as it complements his own reading of the Bible and itsevocations of God. Fromm repeatedly stresses that Judaism instructs Jews toimitate attributes of actions of God. Maimonides’s negative theology liberatestraditional Judaism from the conservative associations of “God” as a super-natural being with defined characteristics. This paves the way for Fromm’sradical heresy, the deconstruction of “God” and the transmutation of God intoan ethical practice and compilation of ethical attributes and ideals.

The negative theology of Maimonides leads, in its ultimate consequence—though not one contemplated by Maimonides—to the end of theology. Howcan there be a “science of God” when there is nothing one can say or thinkabout God? . . . “Knowing God” in the prophetic sense is the same as lov-ing God or confirming God’s existence; it is not speculation about God or hisexistence; it is not theology. (Fromm, 1966, pp. 37-40)

Even if one chooses to reject Fromm’s proposal that the logical conclusionof Maimonides’s thinking is the end of the traditional concept of God, onestill finds in Maimonides’s thinking a revision of the concept of divinitythat lends itself to the kind of ethical monotheism toward which Fromm’shumanistic project leads. Judaism, Fromm argues, is less concerned withthe nature of God than with how God acts in the world, and the lessons thathumans can learn from those actions, which make manifest certain divineattributes that have their human counterparts in ethical attributes.

God is means God acts: with love, compassion, justice, he rewards and pun-ishes. But there are no speculations about the essence and nature of God. ThatGod is, is the only theological dogma—if it could be called that—to be foundin the Old Testament, and not what or who God is. (Fromm, 1966, p. 38)

According to Fromm, the ethical orientation of the Bible and its emphasison transmitting the values of certain divine ethical attributes of God’s behav-ior that humans can and should replicate is evident already in the Bible fromthe point of the story of God’s covenant with Noah, as discussed earlier.Regarding the covenant between Noah–humanity and God, Fromm says,

The development goes further than transforming God from the figure of adespotic tribal chief into a loving father, into a father who himself is boundby the principles which he has postulated; it goes in the direction of trans-forming God from the figure of a father into a symbol of his principles, thoseof justice, truth, and love. God is truth, God is justice. (Fromm, 1956, p. 52)




Fromm argues that Judaism’s primary concern is with the full integration ofGod’s attributes as manifested by his actions in the world which can beinterpreted and imitated by human beings through their ethical and reason-ing capacities and ability to act ethically and confront injustice. What orwho God is, he argues, is not a major concern of Judaism.

Autonomy, Agency, and Liberation From God

For Fromm, the Jewish people’s relationship with God is metaphorical;it is not to be understood literally. Because Fromm is not a theist, he inter-prets Biblical passages that refer to God as depicting a combination of eth-ical and spiritual ideals and societal aspirations that the Israelites developedwith time, and called “God.” Ultimately Fromm hopes the Jewish peoplewill transcend the need to perceive of “God” and worship him by emulat-ing “God’s” values, but without feeling and acting subservient to an author-ity beyond that of their own individual and collective conscience. Frommwrites, “The idea of the covenant constitutes, indeed, one of the most deci-sive steps in the religious development of Judaism, a step which preparesthe way to the concept of complete freedom of man, even freedom fromGod” (Fromm, 1966, p. 25). “God” is a human projection, Fromm claims,one which ultimately humans need to take ownership of, and acknowledgeas being an expression of their own values and aspirations. As a projection,it is a psychologically volatile construct which is prone to abuse by elitegroups, by chauvinists, and those who worship power and material objectsrather than life and moral principles of mutual care and respect amongst allpeoples. The volatile and potentially dangerous nature of the concept ofGod is a major concern of Fromm’s, particularly in relation to the Biblicalconcept of idolatry and prohibition of creating and worshipping idols, asubject that will be explored later in this article.

Much in the way that Maimonides describes the practice of animal sacri-fices by the Israelites as a historically conditioned expression of worship in hisGuide for the Perplexed, Fromm posits that the very concept of God itself, tra-ditionally conceived as an all-powerful being, is itself a function of the naturalevolution of humanity’s ethical and spiritual development. It is humanity’s ini-tial way of ascribing meaning to life from which humanity will eventually beliberated because it is limiting and distorts the true nature of reality.

I believe that the concept of God was a historically conditioned expression ofan inner experience. . . . I believe that the concept “God” was conditionedby the presence of a socio-political structure in which tribal chiefs have




supreme power. . . . “God” is one of many different poetic expressions ofthe highest value in humanism, not a reality in itself. (Fromm, 1966, p. 18)

Fromm sees the seeds of this transcendence already contained withinBiblical narrative, in the passages where Moses, Abraham, and otherBiblical figures argue with God, demanding that he act differently, showgreater compassion, and keep the promises that he has made the Israelitesfor in these stories he is not an infallible authority demanding nothing otherthan submission, but a fallible partner whom people can challenge.

Fromm notes passages in which various religious leaders accuse God ofbetraying his own principles, of being unjust, rash, or too demanding.Moses does not reply to God’s request that he lead the Jewish people witha hearty, servile, enthusiastic “Yes!” On the contrary, his response is tenta-tive and tepid, and he tries to avoid taking on the task with which God hascharged him. Fromm notes that Moses accuses God of the worst moraltransgressions, questioning God’s moral integrity and his honesty. “O Lord,why hast though done evil to this people? Why didst thou ever send me?For since I came to Pharaoh in thy name, he has done evil to this people,and thou hast not delivered thy people at all” (Fromm, 1966, p. 98). Therebelliousness of these passages, moreover a rebelliousness that the Bibledoes not condemn, but on the contrary, portrays with sympathy, indicates,Fromm argues, the fundamentally humanistic, antiauthoritarian orientationof the Bible. Commenting on Abraham’s entreaties to God not to kill inno-cent people alongside the wicked in Sodom and Gomorrah, Fromm writes,

“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” [Abraham speaking to God].This sentence marks the fundamental change in the concept of God as theresult of the covenant. . . . Abraham challenges God to comply with theprinciples of justice. . . . With Abraham’s challenge a new element hasentered the biblical and later Jewish tradition. Precisely because God isbound by norms of justice and love, man is no longer his slave. Man can chal-lenge God—as God can challenge man—because above both are principlesand norms. (Fromm, 1966, pp. 27-28)

The Bible, Fromm argues, is a blueprint for the development of a humanisticconscience which has full confidence in its own moral reasoning capacities,not one which submits to a higher authority in a servile manner because thatauthority has power, or claims to possess a monopoly on wisdom.

Fromm goes on to show how the Talmud further expands on this princi-ple both in its structure and in content. Structurally, he explains that thecacophony of voices and religious perspectives in the Talmud, which are




rendered with respect and each given a place on the Talmudic page demon-strate the pluralism embedded within the Jewish tradition and the moralemphasis on the capacity and requirement for human beings to reasonmorally and religiously, and not merely to parrot God and traditional andhistorically accepted notions of religious law and ethics. The Talmud offersa range of religious perspectives on any given topic and it is transparent inits embrace of multiplicity and in the process by which halacha developsby codifying the majority ruling of rabbinic authorities engaged inTalmudic discourse, while simultaneously giving voice to minority opin-ions. The content of the Talmud, Fromm notes, abounds in stories thatdemonstrate man’s fundamental freedom from God.

Fromm illustrates this point by recounting a well-known Talmudic storyabout the ritual purity of a particular oven owned by a man named Achnai.In the Talmudic Tractate of Baba Metzia, a story is told of Rabbi Eliezerruling that a particular oven is pure, whereas the majority of Rabbis presentdiscussing the matter rule that it is impure. Rabbi Eliezer proceeds to pas-sionately defend his judgment, bringing forth various proofs and even stat-ing that if he is correct various supernatural things will take place relatingto the tree, water, and walls present in the vicinity of the Beit Midrashwhere the discussion is taking place, to affirm the truth of his stance. Thecarob tree is uprooted 100 cubits, the water flows backwards, and the wallsof the Beit Midrash begin to lean—all physical demonstrations that seem-ingly confirm Rabbi Eliezer’s convictions. But the rabbis insist that themajority opinion determines the halachic ruling. Finally, a voice from theheavens, a Bat Kol states that the halacha always follows Rabbi Eliezer, andasks why the rabbis are not respecting his halachic ruling. To this RabbiYehoshua responds, “The Torah is not in the Heavens” and the Gemarastates that Elijah the Prophet told Rav Nassan that when Rabbi Yehoshuaignored Rabbi Eliezer’s ruling, God laughed and said “My children werevictorious over me” (Fromm, 1966, pp. 77-78). This is the essence ofFromm’s humanistic ethics, that “God is not in the heavens”—but here onearth and that religious and ethical rulings must emerge from reason anddebate undertaken by human beings, and not from any claims—howeverseemingly compelling from external sources—even God himself.

Biophilia and Pikuah Nefesh andNecrophilia as a Form of Idolatry

One of the pillars of Fromm’s humanistic psychology is the principle of thesanctity of human life, what in Judaism is known as the value of pikuah nefesh.




Fromm emphasizes that Judaism places the protection and preservation ofhuman life at the heart of its moral and religious concerns. Fromm creates theparallel term of “biophilia” in humanistic psychology to describe the love ofand moral commitment to the preservation of life. Fromm also expands on thisconcept to comment on the positive orientation of Judaism, in which the valueof life is intimately bound up with the value of joy, communal celebration andcohesion, and creativity. This general positive orientation to the task of livingFromm also incorporates into his concept of biophilia.

Biophilic ethics have their own principle of good and evil. Good is all that serveslife; evil is all that serves death. Good is reverence for life, all that enhances life,growth, unfolding. Evil is all that stifles life, narrows it down, cuts it into pieces.Joy is virtuous and sadness is sinful. Thus it is from the standpoint of biophilicethics that the Bible mentions as the central sin of the Hebrews. “Because thoudidst not serve thy Lord with joy and gladness of the heart in the abundance ofall things.” The conscience of the biophilous person is not one of forcing one-self to refrain from evil and to do good. . . . The biophilous conscience is moti-vated by attraction to life and joy; the moral effort consists in strengthening thelife-loving side in oneself. For this reason the biophile does not dwell in remorseand guilt which are, after all, only aspects of self-loathing and sadness. He turnsquickly to life and attempts to do good. (Fromm, 1964, p. 57)

As a corollary, Fromm develops the concept of necrophilia, and adapts itsdefinition to expand beyond the traditionally limited one to describe the ori-entation of those who are literally attracted to dead bodies. For Fromm,necrophilia is a form of psychopathology in which death, violence, destruc-tion, and the power needed to achieve them become worshipped at theexpense of life and the moral values that seek to preserve it. Fromm definesnecrophilia as: “The passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed,putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into some-thing unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction” (Fromm, 1992, p. 332).(An example of a wholly necrophiliac culture that Fromm offers is that ofthe Nazis.) Fromm cites a verse from Deuteronomy 30:19, “I call heavenand earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life anddeath, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live,you and your descendants,” to support his theory of the biophilic orienta-tion of the Bible (Fromm, 1966, p. 162). Fromm also interprets the biblicalstory of King Solomon, in which two women claim to be the mothers of thesame baby, and one agrees to physically split the child in half with theother, as a story about the moral perversity of the necrophiliac orientation.The “necrophilious person” is more willing to kill or to be killed than to




achieve justice through life-affirming means. Solomon recognizes this andawards the baby to the genuine mother who would prefer to have the babylive and given to the woman who is lying and falsely claiming that the babyis her own, and who would be comfortable with just half of its body, eventhough it would be killed if they physically split the baby into two parts(Fromm, 1964, p. 41).

Fromm considers idol worship, as it is depicted in the Bible, as a formof necrophilia. He warns that even the very notion of worshipping one Godcould become a kind of idolatry, if this leads to patterns of behavior thatsow division, violence, and destructiveness amongst human beings. Thehierarchies of power in which an elite religious and social, economic, orpolitical class use the imagery of God and the normative power of religionto promote themselves and their own interests, rather than divine valuesresults in a desecration of both humanistic values and the divine.9

The idol is a thing, and it is not alive. God, on the contrary, is a living God.“But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God” (Jeremiah 10:10); or “Mysoul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalms 42:2). Man, trying to be likeGod, is an open system, approximating himself to God; man, submitting toidols, is a closed system, becoming a thing himself. The idol is lifeless; Godis living. The contradiction between idolatry and the recognition of God is,in the last analysis, that between the love of death and the love of life.(Fromm, 1966, p. 44)

In support of humanistic ethics, Fromm interprets the Biblical andprophetic critique of idolatry as being based on the Bible’s understandingof idolatry as the result of selfishness, aggression, narcissism, and a lack ofhumility and universal moral commitment. He says,

In idolatry, one partial faculty of man is absolutized and made into an idol.Man then worships himself in an alienated form. The idol in which he sub-merges becomes the object of his narcissistic passion. The idea of God, onthe contrary, is the negation of narcissism because only God—not man—isomniscient and omnipotent. (Fromm, 1964, p. 89)

Thus, for Fromm, idol worship, even when not consciously obsessed withdeath, forms part of the necrophiliac orientation.

The prophets of monotheism did not denounce heathen religions as idola-trous primarily because they worshiped several gods instead of one. Theessential difference between monotheism and polytheism is not one of the




number of gods, but lies in the fact of self-alienation. Man spends his energy,his artistic capacities on building an idol, and then he worships this idol,which is nothing but the result of his own human effort. His life forces haveflown into a “thing,” and this thing, having become an idol, is not experi-enced as a result of his own productive effort, but as something apart fromhimself, over and against him, which he worships and to which he submits.(Fromm, 1990b, p. 121)

Fromm further expounds on this notion that the essence of Judaism is anactive stance against idolatry in his discussions of how God tells Moses todescribe the divine to the Israelites. Fromm stresses this point in a numberof his works.

Idol worshippers cannot understand a nameless God, so God says to Moseshow to describe him: “I am becoming is my name.” The most adequate trans-lation of the sentence would be: tell them that “my name is nameless.” Theprohibition to make any image of God, to pronounce his name in vain, even-tually to pronounce his name at all, aims at the same goal, that of freeing manfrom the idea that God is a father, that he is a person. (Fromm, 1956, p. 68)

The problem of idolatry remains for Fromm the essence of humanity’s mostfundamental moral and existential challenge. It is as grave a problem todayas it was in Biblical times: To reject the endless parade of idols that tempthumanity—from the idols of power and greed, to the idols of self-indulgenthedonism outside of an ethical framework that takes into account socialobligations.

The Old Testament, and particularly the Prophets, is as much concerned withthe negative, the fight against idolatry, as they are with the positive, the recog-nition of God. Are we still concerned with the problem of idolatry? . . . Weforget that the essence of idolatry is not the worship of this or that particularidol but is a specifically human attitude. This attitude may be described as thedeification of things, of partial aspects of the world and man’s submission tosuch things. . . . It is not only pictures in stone and wood that are idols.Words can become idols, and machines can become idols; leaders, the state,power, and political groups may also serve. Science and the opinion of one’sneighbors can become idols, and God has become an idol for many. . . .Today [idolatry] is not Baal and Astarte but the deification of the state and ofpower in authoritarian countries and the deification of the machine and of suc-cess in our own culture. (Fromm, 1950, p. 117)

Because humans are used to conceiving of idols as very particular, histori-cally bound objects, they become blind to the myriad forms of idolatry




which plague them today. They expect to be able to protect themselvesagainst the temptations of idolatry simply by professing commitment to oneGod, and by refusing to pray to physical objects that represent deities.However, this highly limited conception of idolatry allows us to evade themore dangerous, widespread, and insidious forms of idolatry which arecommon today. In fact, Fromm argues, the ways in which most religionshave come to conceive of God and to mandate particular kinds of faith andbehaviors—particularly servile ones to religious authorities—illustratehumanity’s natural tendency toward shifting from worshipping the divineand instead, worshipping our own false religious authorities whose mandateis unrelated to the genuine values and aspirations of religion and of God.

Today were Abraham to confront idolatry he would not have the easyoption that he did in the well-known Midrash that describes him physicallydestroying the idols in his father’s idol shop. The idols of greed and lust andpower are tenacious and duplicitous. They disguise themselves from ourawareness and our consciences, and we feign ignorance and righteousness,pleading that we have long banished idolatry. According to Fromm, the den-igration of both divine and humanistic anti-idolatrous principles and idealshas never been as multifarious, dangerous, and prevalent as in the modern era.

The Relationship Between God andthe Ethics of Judaism

Fromm tends to deemphasize the fact that the value of human life withinJudaism is inextricably bound with the idea that human beings are made inthe image of God, and have an active relationship with God. Nevertheless,it is significant that he shares the Jewish commitment to the principle of thepreservation of life as the paramount commitment of his humanistic psy-chology, and the source of its values. Fromm comments in You Shall Be asGods on the significance of God being named in the Bible, “Eheyeh AsherAheyeh,” “I am that I am,” or “I will be as I will be,” names which illustratethe dynamic nature of God, and the impossibility of situating God withinone particular place and form of representation.10 Such a fluid conceptionof divinity and religion, that is responsive to changing social, cultural, andethical sensibilities cannot be idolatrous according to Fromm, because inrefusing to be static it ensures that the human beings that practice it are ulti-mately responsible for its evolution, not ancestors or a historically ossifiedremembrance of one particular encounter with God or a physical manifes-tation of God in the natural world.




Fromm’s ambivalence about the concept of God, certainly of “God”defined in a traditionally theistic sense as an all-powerful creator and aforce that can act at will in the world significantly informs his interpreta-tions of Judaism. Fromm’s strategy is not to challenge faith in God perse—though as a committed secularist he inevitably does this, at least inci-dentally, in his works—nor does he offer new definitions of God. Instead,he isolates the ethical and spiritual teachings that accompany faith in Godwithin Judaism but that are conceptually coherent and viable independentof any particular faith in God.

In Christianity, Fromm argues, the emphasis on original sin and the needof all humans to find salvation through faith in Jesus and the belief that hedied to redeem them of their sins indicates an opposing view of humannature which unlike Judaism is negative, rather than positive in orientationand renders man dependent on God and servile to him. According toFromm, Judaism acknowledges and celebrates human freedom, and offersa substantially more positive understanding of human nature and humanpotential than Christianity, and consequently, a moral tradition that empha-sizes the importance of right moral action, rather than primary or exclusivefaith in God needed to achieve grace and exculpation of sins (Fromm, 1966,pp. 122-123, 140, 159, 166-169).

The distinctions that Fromm makes between Christian and Jewish concep-tions of divinity and of God’s powers feature prominently in his formulationof the ethics of humanistic psychology. As noted earlier, Fromm also cele-brates the Jewish emphasis on serving God with joy. He contrasts this withsome forms of Protestantism that advocate a relationship with God based on asense of human frailty, incompetence, and intrinsic evil, sometimes to thepoint of self-loathing. According to Fromm, this can lead to a socially destruc-tive form of paralysis, in which humanity devolves itself of freedom andresponsibility and projects all of its potential and all that is positive in humannature onto God, thus disempowering itself, doing violence to human charac-ter, and inadvertently creating an idol to worship, in place of the divine.

Fromm explains that monotheistic religions have

regressed into idolatry. Man projects his power of love and of reason untoGod; he does not feel them anymore as his own powers, and then he prays toGod to give him back some of what he, man, has projected unto God.(Fromm, 1990b, p. 170)

However, in the Jewish tradition, although humans can become estrangedfrom God by sinning, they do not need God to be “saved.” By choosing to




act ethically, individuals can save themselves. They are not dependent onGod for salvation. Fromm’s conception of “estrangement” it should be noteddiffers significantly from the Christian notion of “original sin.” For Fromm,(as in Judaism’s conception of human nature) humanity tends toward greed,jealousy, violence, and other destructive forms of behavior. Fromm cites theBible’s discussion of Cain’s sins to illustrate this point. God, in speaking toCain stresses that sin is not inevitable, but a tendency, a temptation whichCain must strive to overcome. “If you do what is right, will you not beaccepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door;it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Breishit, 4:6-7, JPS Bible)But these tendencies are not permanent qualities of humankind that cannotbe transcended. Echoing traditional Judaism, Fromm insists that humanscannot turn to God to change their ways with regard to sins committedbetween man and man, rather, they must embark on a process of growth andchange similar to the Jewish concept of teshuvah. (Repentance.) Here heechoes Maimonides, who emphasizes [and Jewish law concurs] thatalthough God can forgive individuals for most sins committed toward God,God cannot forgive them of sins committed toward other individuals, suchas public humiliation, physical assault, and other forms of aggression.

Repentance on the Day of Atonement atones only for those sins that arebetween man and the Most High, for example, eating forbidden food. . . .But sins which are between man and his fellow men, such as injuring, orcursing or robbing him . . . are never pardoned until he makes restitutionand appeases his fellow. (Maimonides, 1967, 2:9)

For Fromm, this is a remarkable and unique admission of the limitations ofGod’s powers, in that God cannot (or chooses not to) forgive sins commit-ted toward one’s fellow man. The primacy of ethics that informs this prin-ciple supports Fromm’s notion that Judaism is not primarily concerned withmatters of faith regarding what an individual believes about God, butmatters of social and ethical decency and interpersonal obligation. Judaismconsiders these to be inextricably bound up with the will and ethical valuesof the divine but which cannot be mediated nor bypassed with entreatiestoward Him. Once again, Fromm shows that in Judaism, as in his humanis-tic psychology, Torah is not in the heavens, but here, bound up in our capac-ity to reason and act morally; in our daily interactions with our fellowhuman beings and our obligations to treat them justly.




Conclusion

Erich Fromm’s humanistic psychology draws its most fundamental val-ues and concerns from the Jewish tradition and from Jewish texts. Itsemphasis on the sanctity of life, its rejection of all types of idolatry broadlyconceived, and its reflection of the values of the Prophets and commitmentto social justice, particularly their universalistic vision of human brother-hood, mutual tolerance, and the diverse and equally respectable pathwaystoward worshipping the divine and living religious lives all parallel centralcurrents within the Jewish tradition. The active use of reason, respect fordiversity of opinions when creating laws and social norms, and the convic-tion that man must not submit himself to archaic ethical notions but mustpractice a religion that is evolving in response to changing human concep-tions of religious and ethical values all closely mirror the principles thatinform the development and character of the Talmud and of halacha.

Fromm is also a radical and a heretic. But his heresy, however it chal-lenges Orthodoxies within Judaism, comes closer to actualizing the princi-ples of Judaism than many of the more conventionally accepted streams ofJudaism that exist today. One can find great wisdom in Fromm’s writingwithout surrendering faith in the divine, and one can share his universalis-tic moral commitments even as one champions the importance of an endur-ing coexistence between Jewish particularism and universalism, and therecognition that the latter can only exist in a sustainable and psychosociallyviable manner if it draws on the wellsprings of the former, rather than deny-ing it as Fromm sometimes implies would be ideal.

Fromm formally denies one of the most basic principles of Judaism: theunity and oneness of God as an all-powerful being whom humans are oblig-ated to worship. However, the actual content of Fromm’s humanistic psy-chology is also grounded in Jewish values, and its achievement would be arealization of the Prophetic vision of Judaism and of many of the ethicalprinciples on which halacha is based. For Fromm the Seven NoachideLaws and the Ten Commandments are ethically binding,11 regardless ofwhether one believes them to be the formulation of a secular ethical systemarrived at through human reasoning and projected onto a Godhead, or theliteral will of a divine being. In Psychoanalysis and Religion Fromm states,

There need be no quarrel with those who retain the symbol God. . . . Thereal conflict is not between belief in God and “atheism” but between ahumanistic, religious attitude and an attitude which is equivalent to idolatryregardless of how this attitude is expressed—or disguised—in consciousthought. (Fromm, 1950, p. 115)




Ultimately for Fromm, what matters is that one acts in accordance withuniversally binding moral principles. Fromm argues that the Noachidelaws, which apply to all people alike, are predicated not on faith in God pri-marily, but on universal moral principles. God establishes these principles,but one can respect these principles, and thus respect God’s will, regardlessof one’s personal faith or lack thereof. In this, Fromm is not alone. Theprophet Micah similarly acknowledges the intrinsic multiplicity of path-ways toward achieving union with God, serving him, and acting on theprinciples that he has set forth for all peoples. Fromm quotes Micah,describing the Messianic era,

“For all the peoples walk each in the name of its God” (Micah 4:5). Religiousfanaticism, the source of so much strife and destruction, will have disap-peared. When peace and freedom from fear have been established, it willmatter little which thought concepts mankind uses to give expression to itssupreme goals and values. (Fromm, 1950, pp. 118-119)

In a world in which the values and visions of the Prophets and of Fromm’shumanism were actualized, I am confident that the divine would hasten toforgive those who do not formally believe in him, or who, in trying toapprehend him as the nameless and timeless one, have great difficulty con-ceptualizing and maintaining faith in such an abstract idea.

Fromm makes a passionate plea for the creation of a bridge of under-standing and shared commitment between religious and secular, with theconviction that humanistic values are the domain of all peoples, regardlessof their religiosity and beliefs or doubts about God, and can form the basisof a cooperative effort to improve human well-being. All of Fromm’s writ-ings on Judaism and humanistic psychology are grounded in this notion thatthere is a universal moral code toward which all human beings can aspire.It is Fromm’s core conviction, and it is a Jewish core conviction as well.

Fromm concludes Psychoanalysis and Religion with the following plea:

Is it not time to cease to argue about God and instead to unite in the unmask-ing of contemporary forms of idolatry? . . . Whether we are religionists ornot, whether we believe in the necessity for a new religion or in a religion ofno religion or in the continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, inasmuchas we are concerned with the essence and not with the shell, with the experi-ence and not with the word, with man and not with the church, we can unitein firm negation of idolatry and find perhaps more common faith in this nega-tion than in any affirmative statements about God. Certainly we shall findmore of humility and of brotherly love. (Fromm, 1950, p. 119)




At a time when the world is awash in a range of poisonous idols—fromchauvinistic nationalism and racism—to religious fundamentalism thatsanctions violence—and market fundamentalism and concurrent destruc-tive environmental exploitation—it is more important than ever thatFromm’s call to smash the idols that retard human freedom and humandevelopment and that perpetuate violence, injustice, inequality, and bigotrybe heard and responded to with confidence and vigor. The flight from real-ity perpetuated by today’s idols cannot be sustained without putting human-ity and the welfare of earth itself at risk. Erich Fromm’s humanisticpsychology, and its wellsprings in the Jewish tradition offers a return to theconcept of ethical and social responsibility, of covenant between humankind,and between humankind and the divine, wherever one locates it and how-ever one conceives of it.

Notes

1. Fromm sometimes uses the phrases “Jewish tradition,” “Judaism,” or other such all-encompassing phrases to refer to a wide range of Jewish texts, principles, and streams ofthought that reflect the diversity and development of Jewish civilization from the Biblical erathrough the rabbinic and medieval eras and including the Bible, Talmud, Kabbalistic texts,Halachic rulings, Hasidic teachings, Midrash, and rabbinical commentary by sages such asMaimonides.

2. Svente Lundgren (1998, pp. 85-87) notes in Fight Against Idols that Fromm was actu-ally antagonistic toward Reform Judaism as a movement for various reasons. These reasonsinclude the lack of commitment of Reform Jews to Jewish Law, their adaptation of certainaspects of Christianity to Judaism, inconsistencies in the manner in which Reform Judaismaccepted and rejected aspects of Judaism, and the relative wealth and middle-class or upper-class background and aspirations of many Reform Jews.

3. Historically, the Reform movement evinced ambivalence toward Zionism because it per-ceived Zionism as a regression to Jewish particularism, and in contradiction to the universal-istic values of Reform Judaism. Some Reform Jews were likely also concerned that Zionismwould be perceived by the Christian communities in which Jews settled (primarily in theUnited States) as a challenge to the obligations and patriotic affections of Jews to their countryof citizenship and would therefore undermine Jewish claims of allegiance to their respectivecountries. In later years, and since the establishment of the state of Israel, the Reform move-ment has fully embraced Zionism.

4. The subject of man’s anxiety in the face of freedom and his tendency to deliberatelyabsolve himself of freedom and submit to authorities is developed in the following works ofFromm: Escape from Freedom (1994), The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1992), andMan for Himself (1990a).

5. The most common Biblical reference to these populations is “the stranger, the orphan,and the widow,” those who are defenseless in society and without the means to sustain them-selves economically.

6. Although Fromm comments and draws on stories and ethical values in the Torah, hefinds the more radical and universalistic orientation of the prophets to more directly reflect his




humanistic values and in particular to challenge the use of violence and elements of authori-tarianism that can be found in many stories in the Torah such as the ethnic cleansing ofCanaan.

7. Fromm refers to Hillel in a number of his works; this reference is from You Shall Beas Gods (1966). Fromm also begins Escape from Freedom (1994) with Hillel’s dictum, “IfI am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, who am I? And if notnow, when?” In Man for Himself (1990a), Fromm also paraphrases Hillel’s statement not todo unto others what is hateful to you. In discussing Hillel, Fromm states that Hillel repre-sents the more liberal–humanistic wing of Judaism, whereas Shammai represents the moreconservative–authoritarian one. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the kind of relativelymoderate conservatism that Fromm aligns with Shammai here is a far cry from the extremeauthoritarianism and radical conservatism that troubles Fromm most.

8. Fromm did not, however, offer any practical alternatives to Zionism as a means to guar-antee the welfare and freedom of Jews. He failed to acknowledge that the moral universalismthat is found within Judaism and his humanistic psychology offer no protection from the exis-tential threats posed by anti-Semitism.

9. He also explicitly states that God can become an idol in On Disobedience (Fromm,1981, p. 106).

10. Fromm addresses the subject of God’s name and its significance in two other works—The Heart of Man (1964) and Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950)—in addition to You ShallBe as Gods (1966). In each of his commentaries, he focuses on the significance of nameless-ness to the Jewish concept of the divine.

11. Fromm, although certainly not expecting individuals to observe the Sabbath in accor-dance with Orthodox custom, celebrates the nonmaterialistic “being” values of the Sabbath.Fromm states that the Sabbath offers a special, sanctified time that places one’s fellow man,family, and community at the center of one’s energies, rather than the pursuit of money, power,shopping and material consumption, and control over other living things and both creative anddestructive activities. It offers rest and freedom in the deepest senses of both words.

References

Fromm, E. (1950). Psychoanalysis and religion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving: An enquiry into the nature of love. New York: Harpers.Fromm, E. (1963). The dogma of Christ. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Fromm, E. (1964). The heart of man: Its genius for good and evil. New York: Harper and Row.Fromm, E. (1966). You shall be as gods: A radical interpretation of the Old Testament and its

tradition. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Fromm, E. (1981). On disobedience and other essays. New York: Seabury.Fromm, E. (1990a). Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics. New York: Holt.Fromm, E. (1990b). The sane society. New York: Owl Books.Fromm, E. (1992). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Holt.Fromm, E. (1994). Escape from freedom. New York: Owl Books.JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. The Hebrew Bible. (2003). Philadelphia: Jewish Publication

Society.Lundgren, S. (1998). Fight against idols: Erich Fromm on religion, Judaism, and the Bible.

Frankfurt, Germany: Europaishcher Verlag der Wissenschaften.




Maimonides, M. (1967). Mishneh Torah: Laws of repentance. New York: Hebrew Publishing.Petuchowski, J. (1956). Erich Fromm’s midrash on love: The sacred and the secular forms.

Commentary, 22(6), 543-549.

Noam Schimmel is a graduate student at Hebrew College, where he is completing an MA inJewish Studies. He earned a BA in English and political science from Yale University and anMSc in philosophy, policy, and social value from the London School of Economics, where heis currently pursuing a PhD in media and communications. He publishes on a range of humanrights related topics and has an article forthcoming in Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies.He has previously published in the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, theInternational Journal of Children’s Rights, and Ethics and Education.




Judaism and the Origins of Erich Fromm's Humanistic ...

Documents

Transcript of Judaism and the Origins of Erich Fromm's Humanistic ...