The Conception of God in the Works of Abba Gordin (1887–1964)
On the Relationship of a Religious Anarchist to the World
This research project focuses on how the conception of God and religion developed in the works of the Russian Jewish scholar Abba Gordin. His multifaceted oeuvre brings together both the religious and anarchist world of ideas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a young anarchist, he turned his attention to Jewish religious philosophy and traditional Jewish texts at precisely the moment that Yiddish cultural activities in the Soviet Union were being de-hebraicized and his political milieu was becoming increasingly hostile to religion. The waystations of his activity and literary productivity were Moscow during and after the ruptures of 1917, New York during the period of spiritual crisis engulfing North American Jewry, and Ramat Gan after World War II – this is where Gordin published numerous journals and monographs, including works on philosophy of religion, history, and ethical theory as well as on sociology and economics. He was finally also active in cultural associations focusing on literary and ethical issues, yet he never took the public stage and thus – with the exception of a small circle of followers and later specialists of the Russian avant-garde – he remains virtually unknown today.
This study is structured as an oeuvre analysis and aims to reconstruct the origins of Gordin’s conception of God and uncover its origins in intellectual history as well as its potential insights for the theory of science. It also aims to highlight the explicit sources of his work alongside his often implicit background knowledge that informed the various working stages of his texts, and which are preserved partly in scattered commentaries and partly in systematically elaborated sections. The ultimate aim of this study is to identify which historical background Gordin’s religious interest emerged from and how this background permeates the various stages and layers of his oeuvre. It reconstructs a world of ideas within which and through which Gordin tried to reanimate religious tradition for atheist and agnostic circles. This endeavor does not aim to play Gordin’s political relation to the world off against his intellectual and historical/religious affinities, nor does it aim to interpret his oeuvre as a uniform doctrine. Rather, it aims to comprehend and retrace it in all its continuities and ruptures.
