Elia Benamozegh was a rabbi, kabbalist, philosopher, and biblical commentator. A polymath with an exceptionally rich knowledge in a broad array of fields, Benamozegh was born in Livorno, Italy in 1823, where he spent his whole life until his death in 1900. In addition to his command of the Bible, the Talmud, the Mishnah and Halacha—de rigueur for the leading rabbinical figures of his time—he also mastered the canon of kabbalistic literature, as well as Jewish, Medieval Christian, and modern European philosophy. His command of Italian and French meant that he kept abreast with the latest studies in linguistics, history, anthropology and ancient religions. His writings contend with the greatest philosophers of his time, including Kant, Hegel and Fichte. Benamozegh’s reputation lies not only in his broad intellectual horizons, but also in his ability to synthesize Jewish tradition together with a wide range of ideas, and from this shaping an original and thought-provoking—and at times controversial—perspective about the role and function of Jewish religion. His original view of Judaism and its place in the world remains relevant today.
Benamozegh was a prolific writer and public speaker, his ideas receiving significant resonance during his lifetime as well as posthumously. His oeuvre can be divided into three main areas: essays, mainly in French; sermons, delivered and subsequently published in Italian; and a rich body of commentary on the Torah, rabbinical texts, and the Kabbalah, written and published in Hebrew. His tremendously comprehensive and original body of work has been attractive to a variety of readers: rabbis, scholars, philosophers, educated Jews and non-Jews, even popular audiences. On his death he left a lengthy unpublished manuscript in French, which was edited by his disciple Aimé Pallière and published as Israël et l’Humanité (Israel and Humanity). While this monumental essay was then translated into Hebrew and English in different forms, the unabridged version was never published.
In recent years, Benamozegh has attracted significant scholarly interest. In 1997, Jerusalem’s Ben-Zvi Institute held an academic conference dedicated entirely to his thought, followed by another in Italy in the early 2000s, and most recently at Bar Ilan University in 2023. Between the first and most recent of these international conferences, new editions of his writings were published, and different aspects of his legacy were debated by leading scholars. Against this backdrop, a valuable addition to the scholarship on Benamozegh’s work and influence has been made with Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh’s Jewish Universalism, by Clémence Boulouque, Professor of Jewish Studies at Columbia University. Encompassing her rich knowledge of history, philosophy, mysticism, and religious studies, Boulouque’s study provides crucial insights into Benamozegh’s personality and intellectual endeavor, offering a substantive analysis of his original ideas about the unique meaning and contribution of the Jewish faith, and underscores its surprising relevance in today’s modern and secular age.
Another Modernity is divided into four sections. The first lays out Benamozegh’s biography. Even though he was born in Livorno and spent his whole life there, his family were Moroccan immigrants to Italy. After losing his father in his childhood, he was brought up and educated by his uncle, the Kabbalist rabbi Yehuda Koriat. This might explain Benamozegh’s deep affinity for Morocco’s Jewish community, and to the kabbalistic worldview that was highly regarded among its sages. There is no doubt that they greatly influenced his unconventional thought, especially in comparison with his contemporaries in European Judaism. Equally, Boulouque stresses that Benamozegh lived through the Risorgimento, the heyday of Italian nationalism, which resulted in the unification of Italy into a nation state. Benamozegh observed these dramatic events unfolding, engaged with their root causes, and was influenced by the cultural and artistic revival of the era. These left a considerable impression on him, and would have played a major role in shaping his religious, political, and national thought—within a Jewish context and without. The book’s first section ends with an overview of Benamozegh’s oeuvre, written in three languages and across several genres. One of the book’s spectacular feats is the author’s exegesis of the full manuscript of Israel and Humanity, to this day is kept in the library of Livorno’s Jewish community. Boulouque’s scrupulous reliance on the manuscript gives her book a pioneering dimension and persuasiveness lacking in previous works on Benamozegh.
The second section of the book focuses on Benamozegh’s views on the universalistic dimension of Judaism, and the special place that the Jewish faith could occupy in the modern world. The author delves into his philosophical influences; both those he cited explicitly, like Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, and Immanuel Kant, and those that he didn’t but whose influence is clearly felt, like Friedrich Schleiermacher and Salomon Steinheim. Benamozegh clearly adopted the premises of these contemporary philosophies, most notably the central role that reason, ethics, and personal liberty play in social and political modernity. In Israel and Humanity, Benamozegh analyzes the typically modern clash between religious faith and scientific truth. In his view, reason could not subsume religion as an organizing principle of society, not just from the prospective unpopularity of the idea, but also because the confines of religion stretch far beyond the limits of man’s intellectual faculties. While, as he claimed, the essence of religion is the adoration of a transcendent and absolute being, the role of the intellect is to critically evaluate the validity of faith. Furthermore, not only can these two trajectories cohabitate in harmony; Benamozegh argued that religion—that is, the devoted belief in an unassailable truth—is what enables the development and existence of reason. Having explored different religious alternatives, he reached the conclusion that it is in Judaism, of all of the faiths, where the potential solution to the crisis of modernity lies.
To highlight the universalistic scope of Judaism, one has to unpack the common perception that it is a strictly exclusive religion. Boulouque therefore addresses the central pillar of Benamozegh’s thought—the seven Noahide laws. These consist of six prohibitions: worshiping idols, cursing God, murder, sexual immorality, theft, eating flesh torn from a living animal; and one obligation, to establish courts of justice. This notion of basic ethical principles harks back to the Sages, who recorded these laws in the Talmud and attributed them to God’s words to Noah. Boulouque shows how Benamozegh, equipped with modern scientific and philosophical insights on the one hand, and with traditional devotion on the other, delved into the ancient sources and synthesized them into an overarching religious system, modern in its essence, which he believed would address the crisis at hand. Benamozegh believed that even on the eve of the twentieth century, the Noahide laws were still valid as a universally moral matrix rooted in reason. That said, their origin is in the Scriptures. Therefore, the eternal relevance of the Torah is upheld, both in being a binding set of values for Jews and in its validity as a moral basis for universal existence. Boulouque expands on these ideas, revealing their internal tensions and contradictions. For example, there are contradictions between the Noahide Constitution and the laws that bind the people of Israel. The seven Noahide laws refer to the relationship between a person and his fellow man. The punishments imposed on those who do not fulfill them are social punishments that are manifested in a physical way. In contrast, the commandments of the Torah operate on the level between a person and his God, and their transgression is punished in accordance with God’s mercy on those who believe in Him. Thus, a situation may arise in which the Noahide constitution will punish an act which is not considered a crime according to the Sinai constitution. According to Boulouque, Benamozegh ignored the gap between these constitutions. Instead, he presented them as constitutions that are consistent and thus enable the Jewish people to exist harmoniously in a universal framework that operates in accordance with the Noahide laws. Boulouque believes that Benamozegh strove to enhance the universal dimension inherent in the Jewish religion and thereby obscured the meaning of the revelation at Mount Sinai and reduced the importance of its unique message, which was intended for the Israelites only. Nevertheless, Benamozegh’s impressively rich, rigorous, and original thought stands.
The book’s third section takes issue with how Kabbalist notions shaped Benamozegh’s stance on the place of religion in modernity, and on the relationship of the Jewish people with the nations in the past, the present, and the future. These notions are what informs his view that the Jewish faith is a source of meaning for humanity at large. Benamozegh took active part in debates about the primordiality of Kabbalah, believing as he did that it was a secret tradition transferred orally down the generations. He actually argued in favor of a universal theology, one that predated the Jewish people and Judaism. Only Jewish sources retained this in its entirety and in its uncorrupted form, and this was manifested in the kabbalistic notion of sefirot (emanations), describing the many iterations of divine revelation. He further claimed that myriad peoples, religions, and sects build on fragments of that ancient universal theology, ostensibly only available in its entirety in Jewish sources. This notion is inherently pluralistic, open towards other faiths and beliefs by claiming that each of them contains a fundamentally benevolent kernel of truth. According to Benamozegh, the Torah excels at tolerance, inasmuch as it assumes the unique role of articulating between finality and eternity, heaven and earth, and finally between humanity and creation as a whole. Boulouque’s study paints a clear and comprehensive portrait of this insight while adding essential philosophical context.
Notwithstanding, I believe that Benamozegh’s perception of Kabbalah emerges most neatly in his biblical commentary, which preceded his philosophical treatises. This commentary, entitled Em la-Mikra, printed in 1862-3, tackles the attitude of the People of Israel and their faith towards ancient peoples and polytheistic religions, placing special emphasis on the Egyptians and their religious worship. A close reading of this text reveals on the one hand Benamozegh’s mastery of the Zohar, the founding text of Kabbalah, and on the other his comprehensive knowledge of ancient civilizations—as well as a compelling knack for synthesizing these realms of knowledge. The publication of this commentary was received favorably among his disciples in Italy and Greece, but sparked a furor in Eretz Israel, Syria, and Lebanon, to the point that some local sages banished the book for burning. Benamozegh was deeply affected by the controversy, which certainly led him to tone down his future writings. For this reason specifically, it is worthwhile to return to Em la-Mikra, one of his first published essays, and review the early manifestations of the same ideas that would feature more abstractly later in his career. The controversy had a decisive effect on Em la-Mikra’s reach; only a handful of copies have survived. Fortunately, Benamozegh’s commentary has recently been republished by Eliyahu Zini, and has also been added to sefaria.org, the rich online library of Jewish texts. These are major contributions to the study of Benamozegh’s hitherto obscure writings.
The fourth and final section of Boulouque’s book describes the reception of Benamozegh’s ideas among Jewish and Christian philosophers and theologians, effectively giving impetus to a meaningful interreligious dialogue. Boulouque offers copious supporting evidence from the writings of prominent scholars, including Edmond Fleg, Andre Neher, Robert Aron, Jacques Lacan, Emmanuel Levinas, and others. Benamozegh’s faith in fruitful interreligious dialogue was met with skepticism from Jewish and Christians circles alike. But, as Boulouque demonstrates, his faith stemmed from a deeply informed engagement with the origins of religions, a sober assessment of the challenges of the modern world, and a personal commitment to identifying ways of navigating the bleak prospects of the twentieth century. In 1893, an interfaith conference was convened in Chicago under the banner of Prophet Malachi’s speech: “Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?” (Malachi 2:10). Boulouque notes that at the same time, Benamozegh labored over his final essay, Israel and Humanity, the text citing Malachi as much in hope as in admonishment: “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers; otherwise I will come and strike the land with complete destruction.” (3:24). Benamozegh was therefore loyal to his view whereby members of different faiths are inextricably bound to each other, like members of the same family. At the same time, he knew full well that kinship is not always marked by harmonious consideration and mutual respect. To sustain a peaceful relationship with prosperity and goodwill, one is required to meticulously engage in study and education. This was Benamozegh’s life’s work.
More than a century after Benamozegh’s death, his ideas continue to percolate among a fervent readership, predominantly religious Zionists in Israel. Community leaders such as Oury Cherki, Azriel Ariel, and Elitzur Segal engage with Benamozegh in their teaching. Some of them point to his corpus as an original take on Jewish scriptures as bearing a universal message rather than exclusive in essence. Cherki claims that Benamozegh offers a proper analysis of the scriptures which broadly develops their inherent universal dimensions. Starting from the premise that today’s world is politically, economically, socially, culturally, and even religiously interconnected, Benamozegh’s current readers insist on the contemporary relevance of a universal vision of Judaism, placing it on the spiritual vanguard of the world’s moral and social progress—in much the same way that the eldest child in a family paves the way for his or her younger siblings.
This discourse serves as a counterweight to commonplace expressions of Judaism in today’s Israel. It is interesting to note that as early as in the nineteenth century, Benamozegh cautioned against the potential takeover of Judaism by secular nationalism. In his essay Ta’am Leshad, he distinguished the Jewish religion as bound in a single national unit, in contrast to Christianity and Islam, which are spread across numerous nations. He cautioned against a scenario whereby the Jews, living in their own country, would be so preoccupied with the exigencies of statecraft that they would neglect their unique spirituality to the point of extinction.
These statements should serve as a warning for those promoting the current split in Israeli society. While certain sectors totally rely on ancient Jewish tradition in the fear that scientific education jeopardizes their faith, other sectors believe that the Jewish heritage is outdated and lacks any relevance whatsoever. It is worth noting that 160 years ago, Benamozegh’s comprehensive scientific education and the fact he used it to decipher fundamental Jewish ideas was frowned upon by some of his contemporaries—some of whom even put his writings to the flames.
However, Benamozegh’s heroic efforts to acquire a scientific education and derive new insights relied on his conviction that constant study was essential for revealing ancient Jewish spirituality and optimally integrating its valuable and original ideas in the modern world. Moreover, Benamozegh held the idea of progress in high esteem and perceived the idea of mankind being in a continuous process of development as an essential characteristic of the Jewish religion. He thus explained that messianism was all about putting an emphasis on the constant quest for perfecting mankind:
Judaism’s approach to history is shaped by the fact that unlike other religions, it locates perfection not at the beginning but at the end of history. This, surely, is the meaning of its commitment to the coming of a messianic era, which we may define as faith in a future perfection of the human race—religious, moral, social, material—which must be achieved in the last days.
May the aspiration for improvement and progress guide Jewish religion and culture in the twenty-first century.
Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh’s Jewish Universalism, by Clemence Bouloque. Standford University Press, 2020, pp. 328.