Senior Seminar – Class Discussion Outline- Steven S. Schwarzchild – "The Unnatural Jew" pp. 267-77 -

Leaders: Nick Morgan and Keelan Murphy

February 16, 2006

  1. Schwarzchild starts with his personal view of nature (as an opponent). Is he claiming to be representative of Judaism? How does this introduction set the tone for the rest of his essay? How would environmentalists react to such an introduction?
  2. Schwarzchild states that Jews are "alienated from nature" not because of the fact that they are Jews, nor due to Judaism, but rather to the fact that they are/were exiled (P.269). What exile is he speaking of?
  3. Perhaps obviously enough Schwarzchild presents the incarnation as the major distinction between Judaism and Christianity. What is important about the incarnation and its relationship to the environment? (p.269)
  4. Schwarzchild, citing Kant, expresses that the Jewish understanding of nature is that it exists to serve man, though "it must be protected and even improved for precisely this purpose" (p.270). How does this view compare to other theories of value that we have read?
  5. Immanentism is defined as "Any of various religious theories postulating that a deity, mind, or spirit is immanent in the world and in the individual."1 Jonas describes Immanentism as contrary to Judaism. Why? (p.272)
  6. On page 272 Schwarzchild states that "’Humanistic’ ecology should not be defined in a narrowly utilitarian fashion." What does he mean by this? How does he think that it should be defined?
  7. Schwarzchild says, on page 276 that "Berdichivski draws the Nietzschean, Zionist, programmatically pagan conclusion: ‘[T]he blade and the bow, by whose force Israel fared so nobly,’ must be restored in the place of the book in Israel’s renaissance." How does this compare to the Talmudic rabbis warning "against the use of the Torah as a spade"?
  8. What does Schwarzchild mean when he says, on page 277, that "the culture of beauty is prized but subordinated to the culture of morality by Judaism."? Do you think that he has justified this viewpoint? 
  9. In the conclusion, Schwarzchild says "that as a Jew I have been an unnatural man much longer." What does he mean by this? How does he define an "unnatural Jew"? Also, how did the exile of Jews from Israel make them unnatural?

1 The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.