Professor Will Herberg tells us: In modernity, man used reason and science to shape his life and culture, placing everything in human terms, forgetting the divine. The expansion of science and technology fostered the illusion that human well-being was simply a matter of increasing economic productivity and industrial power. «Progress» became the watchword. In morality and philosophy, in social life, even in religion, omnipotent man became the «master» of all things. Intoxicated by his success, he could not imagine any power greater than his own, so everything, literally everything, was permitted to him as an individual or as a collective: he needed to believe in nothing, there was nothing he needed to revere, nothing he needed to fear, he only had the power. The result was a humanity that experienced decades of horrors, one worse than the other, until the Second World War, which demonstrated that the sole use of reason and science, without other values, was not only insufficient, but terribly harmful.

The postmodern generation, shaken of its illusions by decades of uninterrupted horror, sought to find another path in what has now been called the «return to religion,» which so many have hailed as the sign of our times. But this return has not yielded the expected result: the horror continues, now sheltered in a cloak of religiosity. Intolerance toward others has led to new acts of barbarism that we would never have imagined would occur in the 21st century. They replaced the dictatorship of reason with the dictatorship of religion. The old thesis was that reason and science were the way. The new thesis is that religion is the solution to humankind’s problems. Both have failed to achieve a better world.

Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, better known by his acronym «Shagar,» tells us: During Modernity and the Enlightenment, Judaism had to defend itself against secularism, especially from those who thought religion was outmoded. Now, in the Postmodern era, where all values ​​are questioned and there is no longer belief in progress or reason, religion has returned with a vengeful spirit. Fanatical religious groups don’t take criticism seriously, claiming it is just personal opinions that believers can easily dismiss.

What could the new path be? Professor Jean Gebser proposes one: man must integrate his feelings, instincts, and intuitions with reason and logical thinking. Man must use his personal experiences to transform reason and knowledge into wisdom. Wisdom equals intelligence plus experience. And since every human being has gone through different personal experiences, each person will have their own reason, their own truth. There is no single explanation for things, but many, as many as there are men and women in the world. There is not just one Judaism, but many, as many as there are Jews in the world.

It is written in Tractate Sanhedrin 4:5 of the Mishnah: «Man stamps many coins with the same stamp, and they are all alike, but the King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, has sealed each man with the seal of the first man, yet none of them is like his fellow man.» The Creator and life have made us not so similar to our fellow men.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Works by Will Herberg, Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, and Jean Gebser.