Dare to Question: Essays in Jewish Ideas

CHAPTER 1

Understanding Judaism

The Bible and the Talmud are manuals for behavior, not theological prescriptions. The presence of God² and God’s role in this world are there in abundance but not in terms of theological formulae that are usually the requirement for and of religious commitment. There are no credos. Since medieval times, however, there have been various lists of beliefs that Jews must adhere to. The most famous are the Thirteen Principles of Faith complied by Maimonides. This list has become so universally accepted that it finds expression in most prayer books both in itself and in lyrical poems.

In fact, these lists of creeds were controversial.³ Often they were direct responses to Christian and Islamic attacks on Judaism. It was felt necessary at the time to counter the charges that Judaism was not a proper religion. Many contemporary authorities bridled at these formulations, which seemed to confine ideas to specific phraseology. Others modified and reduced them. It has been argued that Judaism has no dogmas. And in the Christian sense, that may be true. But nowadays, Orthodoxy treats certain ideas as if they were.

The Bible nowhere uses the expression You must believe. The first of the Ten Commandments is worded I Am the Lord your God.⁴ A statement. And it is up to everyone to engage with this assertion or ignore it. It does not say, You must believe or It is an obligation to believe. I am not saying one is not obliged, but obliged to do what? To try to understand and experience? Or just to agree perfunctorily?

The Talmud gives us certain ideas that were considered central to Judaism. The Mishnah⁵ mentions resurrection, revelation, and some other items and some individual people who have no part in the world to come. The text does not state that those who have no part in the world to come are excluded from Jewish life over a theological doubt or incapacity to believe. All we are told is that Midah Keneged Midah, measure for measure. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, you don’t get one! And this similarly applies to the other issues mentioned. These lists, therefore, are not the same as theological obligations or credos in the way these words are commonly used.

The trouble is that Maimonides and the medieval theologians of all religions wrote and thought within a Greek philosophical framework. Maimonides was a follower of the Aristotelian school (with some reservations), a system that pursued truth scientifically and rationally. Many elements of the philosophy that Maimonides took for granted no longer help many of us in our philosophical thinking. Yet his list of what Jews are expected to believe is now taken as axiomatic.

The Language of the Bible

The early and formative years of the Bible were long before Greek philosophy made its appearance. If the golden age of Socrates is approximately two and a half thousand years ago, King David predates this by about five hundred years. And many of the biblical texts are earlier. The Bible is not a rational, scientific text. Its language is predominantly what we would call poetic or exhortative (as well as legal). This should not be confused with the way we regard poetry as meaning something fanciful, imaginative, and therefore not based in reality but rather that the style of communication has to be understood on more than face value. There is a music to the language that conveys as much as the actual words.

Science usually uses language in a very different way to poetry. It is strictly descriptive and is terse and precise. The language is the servant of the experiment. Poetry uses language much more creatively. Such a language is used both to describe something and to create a mood, an impression. In both, the words are symbols for communication. But they have different functions.

The aim of the Bible is to bring a spiritual dimension into everyday life so that there is an immediate connection between human life and, let us call it, divine life. This connection is prescribed and described to reinforce the identity of a small group of believers in an alien world. This does not mean that it is illogical, just that its parameters are different parameters to the ones we in the West have been conditioned by for so long. You might call it suprarational.

The ancient Hebrew language is unusual. The Hebrew words that have the same root SFR can mean different things—to tell, to count, or to number—just as the root SHR can mean to sing, to recite, or to speak. Words communicate through the visual, the aural, and the oral. The ways of communicating, whether human or divine, are many and varied. The Jews of the Bible were not called upon to bring philosophical proofs of their beliefs, nor were they expected to submit their feelings to rational analysis. But their identity was constantly being challenged by those other peoples who lived around them and the challenges of life.

The Talmudic Period

For the next phase of Jewish history, the Second Temple and the Talmudic period, Jews lived scattered among different and alien cultural influences. This is the rabbinic or Talmudic era of Judaism in which the oral law, the Talmud, came to be almost as important for the future of Judaism as the Bible itself.

The language and ideograms of their discourse were heavily influenced by a way of thinking that was Greek or Roman and the give-and-take of debate. The rabbis strongly objected not just to the materialist cultural baggage of Greece but also to the very rational approach of its great philosophers. The rabbis felt that logic was an incomplete way of looking at the world. So did the Greeks themselves in a way. That was why they maintained a nonrational antidote in their strange collection of gods cavorting with humans and fighting among themselves. The monotheism of Judaism found this offensive. But the Talmud illustrates how scientific the rabbis of that time were, observing both the heavens and the earth and experimenting too. Of course, they wrote and thought in the context of their time and what science knew at that stage about the universe. Their objections to the Greco-Roman world were not scientific but spiritual, and they incorporated both. And they used common language and worldviews too. They talked about spirits and a range of magical, supernatural forces and cures. Their world was suffused with pagan ideas that held true until modernity.

Mysticism

Many of the Talmudic rabbis were committed to a mystical tradition. It had developed from biblical times as a counterbalance to the rational. The clearest example of this conflict between the logical and the mystical is the episode that the Talmud records concerning Elisha ben Abuyah who became an apostate and was henceforth called Acher—someone else, the unmentionable. Four major second-century rabbinic leaders are described as entering the orchard.⁶ The orchard, Pardes, in this context, is a code for the mystical experience of God. "Four entered into the orchard, they were Ben Azai, Ben Zoma, Acher and R. Akiva.⁷ R. Akiva said to them ‘When you reach the stones of pure marble do not say Water, Water because it says [Psalms 101] Whoever speaks lies cannot survive in My Presence.’’’ Ben Azai died, Ben Zoma went mad, and Acher cut away at the roots.⁸ Only R. Akiva came out in peace. Naturally, there are many different ways of understanding this incident.

The context is the chapter in the Mishnah that starts by limiting general inquiry into Ma’aseh Bereishit, esoteric speculation about how the world was created, and Ma’aseh Merkavah, the Chariot, a code for what we now call mysticism—a connection with God that transcends normal physical limitations—symbolized in the way that the prophet Elijah was taken up to God in a chariot of fire. It is repeated in the vision of God in the prophet Ezekiel’s first chapter.

The Mishnah suggests that not everyone is equipped for these subjects of investigation. They should be studied only with expert teachers and only after one has acquired a solid basis in revealed Torah before turning to more complex issues. In the course of the discussion in the Talmud, where this episode is recounted, R. Akiva warns his friends not to take their experiences at face value. Just because something looks like water that does not necessarily mean that it is water. Many things in life are not what they appear to be. He is arguing against a rational, material way of observation in the context of spiritual experience. For whatever reasons, the first two had such a profound experience that it changed them in destructive ways, and Acher simply had no patience for or interest in the mystical experience.

Later on, in the same chapter, the Talmud records an exchange in which Elisha ben Abuyah is quoted as wondering whether there are two divine forces at work in this world. This is Greek gnosticism; there are two conflicting forces in the universe: good and evil. Plato in his Republic suggests that as God is good, He cannot be the source of evil. Evil must come from another power. The link between Acher and Greek thought is clear.

This is the same Acher who disputes the rabbinical concept of the afterlife as the place where humans are rewarded or punished for their behavior. R. Yaakov⁹describes a situation in which a father sends his son up a tower to send away the mother bird before taking her fledglings. These are two actions that the Bible says will bring long life (Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 22:6). Nevertheless, the child falls and dies. In response to the question of where the long life is, the rabbis reply that the real long life is the eternal life after death.

According to tradition (and the Maharsha¹⁰ commenting on the incident), it was this incident that led to Elisha ben Abuyah’s apostasy. Elisha stands for the rational school, and R. Akiva stands for the mystical school. R. Akiva is known to us as the supporter of Bar Cochba in his nationalist rebellion against Rome. Indeed, R. Akiva thought that Bar Cochba was the messiah for a while, and there are in various collections today coining that Bar Cochba minted describing himself as the messiah.

Extreme nationalism was and is often associated with apocalyptic ideas, a metaphysical attachment to land and abstractions of nationhood. R. Akiva’s association with Bar Cochba says something about R. Akiva’s political ideology. But R. Akiva also asserted that the Song of Songs was the holiest book of the Bible.¹¹ The Song of Songs is a beautiful flow of passionate poetry. Its holiness derives from the understanding that the real lovers are God and Israel. The metaphor is that passion is the way to experience God rather than intellect so that when R. Akiva says that the Song of Songs is so fundamental to Jewish life, he is asserting the primacy of emotion and poetry as the way of really drawing closer to God. And R. Akiva is following an established idea that runs through the prophetic tradition of the Bible.

Jerusalem or Athens

Isaiah, the prophet, compares the relationship between Israel and God to that of lovers.¹² He describes the pleasure of the relationship in marital terms. The prophet Hosea makes the analogy of Israel as a faithless wife the central theme of his message¹³ and sees the reconciliation as one in which the relationship is not one of domination but positive interaction and coexistence. The pre–Greek Jewish way of expressing closeness to God is the very antithesis of a rational philosophical one.

Opposition to ancient Greek language and wisdom recurs in the Talmud. But this opposition came not just from rabbis who disapproved of pagan manifestations of Greek culture, such as the theaters and circuses for their emphasis on the physical. They were also expressions of opposition to the political hegemony that the successors of Alexander imposed on the Jews. Many of the debates recorded in the Talmud between rabbis and one Roman emperor, general, or officer are indeed paradigms of the rational-nonrational divide.

Issues, such as resurrection, in the last chapter of Talmud Bavli Sanhedrin are challenged by non-Jews on a rational basis and defended by the rabbis nonrationally. Rabbinic approval of high-ranking families teaching their children Greek was excused as being necessary for affairs of state.¹⁴ And they drew a distinction with speaking Greek, which they allowed, in contrast to the wisdom of Greece.¹⁵ But certainly, the emotional antagonism was profound even if economic necessity and political reality required some interaction, as indeed is the case today.

Nevertheless, Greek thought, whether Stoic or Epicurean, finds resonance in Jewish thought. Both coexisted in Judaism despite different rabbinic preferences. But two thousand years of living under alien theological systems resulted in two things. Those Jews who explored their religious thinking in a systematic way inevitably used rational, philosophical systems and tools as those of the non-Jewish philosophical world, starting with Philo of Alexandria,¹⁶ the early church fathers, and then the Arabic mutakallimun, all of whom used earlier Greek philosophical models, which were the sciences of those times.

They all assumed that one needed proofs of the existence of God in the same way that one would seek proofs of mathematical formulae. Aristotle came up with what he claimed were five proofs. But theoretical proofs for God are very limited. By the time of Descartes,¹⁷ the great French philosopher, he realized it was all but impossible to prove one’s own existence, let alone God’s. His solution was cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I am. But it is no proof of anything other than, perhaps, that there is a thought so that when philosophical proofs came to be challenged, the bottom fell out of their justifications.

The mystics went to the other extreme and spoke in symbols and metaphors that precisely because they rejected any kind of rational scrutiny and opened the way for elements of magic, hocus-pocus, and trivialization. Even attempts to bring some systematic logic into chasidism failed because of the fundamentalist and anti-Haskalah atmosphere in which the new movement was born. From being an innovative, creative force of ideas in Judaism, over time, it became, structured, institutionalized, and intellectually regressive.

I would argue we should be able to draw on both the logical and the mystical in our modern attempt to understand the complete person on a whole range of mental tools and experiences in order to get as complete a picture of our world and its many levels of being and experience. I believe it is essential to try and span the two conflicting ways of thinking—the logical and the mystical.

Midrash as Theology

For the most creative period of post–biblical Jewish thought, the Midrash, the tradition of open and creative interpretation of holy texts rather than theology, was the vehicle for religious intellectual expression.

The Midrashic approach of the rabbis is indeed not a philosophical one. It is syncretic rather than systematic. It is a vehicle for teaching and reinforcing a specific rabbinic agenda. It is homiletic. It brings lots of different ways of thinking, imagining, and talking together. It is certainly prephilosophical and was more the precursor of a mystical approach to God than a rational one. One can only understand rabbinic thought through this earlier framework of Midrash.

Midrash is usually a way of using a biblical verse to convey, directly or indirectly, a religious idea. This was usually done orally, in study, or in a public sermon. Many of the ideas are hyperbolic. Often, Midrash exaggerates. In some cases, it is manifestly contrary to the accepted Halacha. Sometimes, Midrashim are introduced with the statement, He saw that his audience was dozing, and so he said or as Rashi¹⁸ says, they had to find a way of holding the attention of the masses. A typical example is the statement in the Talmud¹⁹ that appears to say that it is better to put out a human life than to put out a light on Shabbat. But such a system, allowing for flexibility, is a wonderful way of seeing the range of rabbinic ideas. And this why there is no attempt to come to conclusions or to decide on a single accepted position in Midrashic thought.

And this is why to understand the essence of Jewish theology, one must turn not to philosophy but to Midrash. Indeed, Maimonides,²⁰ in his introduction to the last chapter of Sanhedrin and his Guide for the Perplexed, says unequivocally that only fools would take Midrash at face value.²¹ In many ways, Maimonides is the ideal exponent of Judaism. Law, Halacha, the constitution of Judaism, is paramount, and in that area, he excelled. His books of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, are still studied avidly. At the same time, his Guide for the Perplexed is the greatest book of medieval Jewish philosophy even if now it is completely dated. And his correspondence underlines the importance of the mystical world. He encompassed it all.

If we seek to impose only a rational stamp on Jewish thought or Judaism in general, we will fail to understand a major part of its mood and intent or feel its authentic voice. The Bible as a general rule was simply not interested in justifying or giving reasons for most of its legislation. And although later commentators did indeed try to impose rationality on it, none more obviously than Maimonides himself, even he realized that the Jewish tradition, of necessity, transcends the boundaries of logic.

This is not to suggest that there is no room for logic or reason in Judaism—just that we should not try to impose it universally or think that Judaism must be seen exclusively through a rational or a mystical framework. There is room for both. And I will use both in the essays ahead.

CHAPTER 2

Belief

The idea or the experience of God is the foundation on which Judaism is based. The Torah talks about the uniqueness of God, loving God and knowing God (but nowhere talks about proving the existence of God). A philosopher will, of course, want to know what exactly one means by the existence of something that has no physical characteristics.

Most of the behavioral commands are phrased as, "Say to the children of Israel that they should do x, y, or z. No such phraseology is used with regard to the abstract aspects of the Torah. There is no, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘This is what you must believe.’"

Nowhere in the Bible is there a formulation that we would recognize as a statement defining or describing God. God simply says that God is one.²² That God is Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh,²³ I am what I am and No human can see Me.²⁴ This is not to say that ideas about God are irrelevant or indeed that the theological importance of God can be underestimated. But it is to emphasize that whereas the Bible specifically commands actions, it is action rather than a stated faith that is the criterion for testing Jewish religious commitment.

In Jewish law, there is an elaborate structure of authority: a clear demarcation of hierarchy. What is important, and what is less so? We can work this out from the punishments the Torah ascribes to each one. No such defined position exists on what we might call theological issues. Maimonides in the eleventh century was accepted as an absolutely crucial voice on Jewish law. And he still is. But if he was a major thinker in the context of an Aristotelian philosophic system then, nowadays, he is simply a footnote when it comes to philosophy. And if his Thirteen Principles have come now to be accepted as a handy guide or menu of Jewish theology, there is no obligation to accept an Aristotelian description of the universe and how he understands God any more than Plato or indeed any modern philosopher or rabbi.

If God is the paramount feature of a religious life, then in what way does the Bible seek to convey His importance? Not, as others do, by insisting on a statement of belief. This does not mean that God is any less essential or fundamental, just that there are different ways of relating.

Between God and Humanity

The book of Genesis records encounters with God. From Adam and Eve through Cain and Abel, on to Enosh, Enoch, and Noah, the search for the appropriate relationship underlies the narrative. Adam and Eve had no relationship with God. They were given instructions and punished for their disobedience.²⁵ Cain was the first to try to relate to God with an act of devotion by bringing the first sacrifice. Perhaps his method or intent was inadequate. He only offered some of his produce. Abel offered the best. Abel’s offering was accepted. Cain was angry. God told Cain not to despair but to try to do better in establishing a relationship with God.²⁶ Cain only responded by killing Abel. His line of inquiry led to a dead end.

Enosh²⁷ called on God, perhaps in an attempt at verbal contact rather than sacrificial. Enoch walked with God and was taken away.²⁸ One can speculate that his idea of a relationship with God was through withdrawal from society—the lone hermit. There was clearly something wrong with his relationship; otherwise, he might have been chosen before Noah to save mankind. All these early examples describe the first tentative attempts of mankind to understand and relate to God.

It was only with Noah that God found a follower He approved of, even if both Noah and Enoch were both described as walking with God.²⁹ Noah, however, had no impact on other people. It was not until Abram that we see the example of the approved relationship between God and man.³⁰ And this seems to be because, as the text says, Abraham succeeded in passing the right way to behave on to others and the next generation. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—all of them were shown engaging in different ways with God and humans. They were all involved mainly positively with other humans, even those of a different persuasion, so long as they had some values.

From Moses onward, this relationship was bifurcated into a personal and a national experience. The nation was more complex and less unanimous. Debate and uncertainty entered the situation. Yet God was not challenged directly. When things went wrong, anger was focused on Moses. What was often asked for by humans was a description, a name, or a reassurance. One might even say that even if in the Bible God’s presence completely dominated, the people did not always seem to feel it. We look back and, seeing it through modern eyes, can only wonder how a people that had experienced divine intervention firsthand so many times could, nevertheless, on occasion rebel or act as though it had not had much effect.

What Does Belief Mean?

Immediately after crossing the Red Sea, the Bible says that they believed in God and in Moses His servant.³¹ If we were to take the word believe as we usually use it, this would put belief in God on the same footing as belief in Moses. Clearly, the word functioned very differently in the biblical mind from the way we regard it. What was that experience if within days they are complaining and threatening to return to Egypt? How come it seemed to have been so transient? Is this the inevitability of the relationship between a mortal and nonphysical force?

The Hebrew word EMuNa, normally translated as belief as a way of thinking about the absolute, actually means something very different in the Torah. It means to be convinced of something, to trust, or to have confidence in someone. It reminds us of the distinction we make in English between "I believe in" something as opposed to believing that something is the case—to believe in God as opposed to believing that God exists. They are two different sorts of statements. To believe that is usually a statement about material facts, scientific or even ethical. And it usually requires some evidence to support it. If I believe that it will rain tomorrow or that base metal can be turned into gold or that good people are rewarded for their deeds, then I need some sort of factual information to support such a belief.

On the other hand, if I say that I believe in you, I am saying that I have come to be convinced of your friendship or reliability. I base this on experience. I do not seek proof. Many people remain convinced that someone loves them long after the evidence shows that they do not. We humans are as easily deceivable about God as we are about other relationships. "Belief in is far more a matter of feeling than belief that. I believe that you are my father is only likely to be said if someone has challenged your paternity in the first place and there is some reason to doubt. Otherwise, a person simply says, I am your father," which is precisely how God addresses us in the opening verse of the Ten Commandments.

Consider the way the root of the word EMuNa is used in the Bible. Sarah asks, "Is it really the case UMNam that I will give birth?"³² Joseph threatens his brothers, "We will see if what you say can be verified VaYeaMNu divreichem."³³ Yaakov does not believe Lo HeEMiN³⁴ his sons when they tell him that Joseph was alive. We can see that we are talking about conviction, certainty, and trust in all its uncertainties. When Moses had to keep his arms high while Yehoshua fought Amalek, he needed Aaron and Hur to hold his hands up. With their support, the hands of Moses remained up until sunset. His hands were EMuNa,³⁵ firm. When a woman suspected of adultery appears before the priest, he makes a declaration to which she has to assent. Her agreement is by her affirming, AMeN AMeN.³⁶ We have a word that connotes firmness, agreement, and reliability. It is not a word that connotes theological or philosophical proof.

Another fascinating use of the root of the word belief is the word for a nurse. God will care for Israel as a "nurse cares OMeN for a child."³⁷ At the end of Deuteronomy, Moses described the Jewish people as backsliding and a people with no credibility, trust, children with no EMuN.³⁸ There are plenty of quotes that emphasize the faith or lack of faith that the people had in God and in Moses. But the meaning of this faith was not an abstract or an intellectual affirmation. Rather, it was a statement of trust, conviction. God is described as being NeEMaN,³⁹ reliable, in just the same way as Moses is described as NeEMaN.⁴⁰

This is important because conviction and certainty, with regard to people, often come about as a result of intangible or emotional responses. It is feeling that decides certainty just as much as, if not more than, theory. God is not to be found in the theory but in the experience, in the conviction of a sense of God, of experience, and of confidence rather than of definition.

Truth

We can apply a similar analysis to the word truth. In our culture, truth is usually an absolute. As the formula used in civil courts go, one is required to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as if there can ever be such a thing. Life and circumstances are nuanced. Rarely are they black or white, hence the association of the word truth with God and with one true religion. But if you look at the word EMeT, truth, in the Torah, a different kind of usage emerges, one that is more empirical and less absolute.

Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, used the word emet in thanking God for having directed him to Rebecca, bestowing emet, leading him down the correct path toward his goal.⁴¹ When the patriarchs asked for a favor, they asked both their children and God to deal with them in a way that was emet, correct, appropriate.⁴² In this Genesis context, emet referred to actions rather than ideas. In Exodus, when Jethro advised Moses to look for a team of men to assist, he is told to look for men of truth who hate corruption.⁴³ Deuteronomy⁴⁴ uses the word empirically, Is it true that this event actually happened? And the book of Judges uses the word emet several times to mean to do the right thing.⁴⁵

So when we examine the nature of the word truth and apply it to God, it is clear that we are talking about an analogy or a metaphor. It signifies behavior in man that connects him or her to God in terms of dependence and reliability—something of importance, commitment. It is a quality we apply to God that we value in ourselves, that reinforces our commitment. It tells us something about the nature of God and about the nature of humans without implying absolutes or a monochromatic concept that excludes other possibilities.

Truth in early biblical terms was not intended, I am sure, to exclude all other possibilities. And that was why there was room to accept and even appreciate other religions. Think of Abraham and Melchizedek and in Talmudic times to allow for the pious of the nations of the world, who would achieve spiritual greatness and the World to Come.⁴⁶ If truth is an empirical idea, then it allows for intellectual uncertainty and experiment. This is the very opposite of the fundamentalist position, which implies that the idea is fixed, defined, something impervious to modification or nuance and exclusive to the faithful.

Experience

The need to experience is essential. Taste it and see, says the psalmist.⁴⁷ Actions count,⁴⁸ not words or, for that matter, thoughts. In rabbinic Judaism, it is the act of breaking Jewish law in public that results in a person being barred from giving testimony in a court of law.⁴⁹ It is the commitment to law that defines membership of the group once one’s genealogy or conversion has gained one initial acceptance. Anyone can say whatever he or she wants. I can say that I believe in men from Mars. I guess I would be prepared