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Judaism – The Unnatural Faith
From the artificial seven-day week, to its refusal to recognize any deity within the forces of nature, the Torah pioneered the idea that G-d is not found within nature. G-d is not in the ocean or the sun, or any physical force. When Adam was created, he was not described as being an animal (though physiologically we are, indeed, animals) — but was instead described as being made of dust, and also ensouled by the divine breath. G-d in this world is only found inside each person.
As Rabbi Sacks points out in a brilliant piece, the descendants of Avraham who were rejected from the covenant that became Judaism were similarly described as being like animals, great men of nature. In any other culture, being a passionate man who was a great archer would make one a hero – think of Davy Crockett and many other classic and folk heroes. But not in Judaism. The archer, Ishmael, was likened to a wild donkey, while the great hunter in the forest, Esau, was described as having “game in his mouth,” evocative of a cat with a bird in its teeth. Both were rejected, replaced by Isaac and Jacob, respectively.
The contrasts with animal behavior run deep. Animals are not thinkers: even animals that prepare for winter do so as a matter of instinct, not strategic planning. So, too, the ancestors that were excluded from the covenant were driven by their momentary passions: Ishmael was guided by his anger: “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” (Gen. 16:12) And Esau was perhaps even worse. Esau’s eagerness to obtain lentil soup, a desperation that caused him to sell his birthright, shows us that Esau truly met the aspirations of 21st-century millennials: Esau lived in the moment.
Within nature, time horizons are necessarily short. In the “might makes right” violent perspective of Ishmael, or the hunter of game, intangible long-term belongings are unimportant. After all, as Esau says, “I am on the road to death, of what use to me is the birthright?” But we are all on the road to death. The question is whether or not we value the things we do in our lives, and understand that our accomplishments and relationships live on in the people and institutions and things we build in the time we have. We concur with Esau that we are all on the road to death; we differ in that we recognize that it is what we do along the way that matters.
G-d does not want a people who are in sync with nature – He had that in Ancient Egypt, a people completely in harmony with the Nile and the natural pagan deities. The god of the Torah wants people who seek to have a relationship with Him. This is why, as Sacks points out, our matriarchs were largely infertile, and they had to seek a relationship with G-d before they were able to bear children. For Jews, the things that come naturally to most people do not happen automatically for us; G-d wants us to ask, to pray, to engage with Him. And so He challenges us accordingly. The Torah is telling us that we are to aspire to a higher existence, and that means seeking out the divine, not communing with nature.
The Torah is telling us that to be a Jew, one must aim to be more than an animal, to see nature as something to improve, not something to emulate. This runs counter to the entire pagan world within which Judaism was born, and finds new relevance today, in a world that is so obsessed with neverending obeisance to Mother Earth that we have taken to giving proper names to every passing weather system.
It is “only natural” for man to seek pleasure, to live in the moment, to have as much fun as possible before he dies. None of these are Torah virtues. For Torah Jews, happiness is the byproduct of a life of good choices, a life in which we do our best with what we have. And so we take the long view; as links in the chain between the past and the future, our responsibilities go back hundreds of generations, and stretch forward into the generations to come. Anything we do to jeopardize our relationship to G-d means that we jeopardize the investment and dedication and suffering of all who came before us, and risk making our children and children’s children disconnected from G-d and His Torah. Endangering the future endangers our present, because if we act like animals, if we act in harmony with nature, then we become nothing more or less than our environment, actors within nature itself.
The Torah charges us otherwise: to be G-d’s own lieutenants, responsible for improving and completing the world.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Entirely understandable.
Here is the problem as I see it: The Torah itself is independent of Greek thought. But the Greeks very much influenced later Jewish sources, and infected Judaism in turn with Greek (and not Torah) notions of “truth” and “perfection” and “beauty.” As a result, many Jewish sources got hung up on G-d as perfect, and static – because of Greek, not Jewish, influences.
So in the past I have written a series of Rico-posts on Perfection and Truth – specifically to combat Greek influences on Torah commentaries.
As I wrote:
I also argue against the virtue of humility as many Christians define it.
But that does not mean that every Jew gets the memo. Many of them, like the poster you quote, automatically accept what are essentially Greek and Christian assumptions, even though they are entirely alien to a Torah worldview.
In some Kabbalistically oriented texts reason is considered to be a faculty of the animal soul, not of the G-dly soul. Research on many species of birds, mammals, and even octopi has revealed some capacity to reason.
Speaking of animals. I vividly remember a nature video:
Africa. Drought. Shrinking, crocodile infested waterhole. Troop of baboons coming to drink. A female with her infant clinging to her cautiously heads for the water… but not cautiously enough. A crocodile lunges for her and snatches her baby. The alpha male of the troop stands at the edge of the water with his eyes wide. He leans towards the water and leans away from it. Back and forth for what seemed like an eternity, but was only a few seconds. He was obviously self-aware enough to be anticipating pain – maybe death – if he tried to rescue the baby.
He was vacillating between self-preservation (yes, probably his own offspring; yes, he likely had performed a post–birth abortion on the infant progeny of his predecessor, so a rescue would in its own way advance his own genetic superiority) and the glimmerings of duty.
The magnificent little bastard steeled himself and went into the water. He got the infant away from the crocodile. It was dead, but it sure didn’t look like uncomplicated instinct that brought that alpha ape into the water.
I submit that there is a direct line from that ape, through the thought that each of us is a “part of the maine,” to NYFD Ladder 15 going up the stairs on 9/11.
I’m not in any way disputing what iWe says. I’m just saying that if both reason and the courage of that ape are part of our animal nature, the path that Abraham pioneered is even harder than we like to think it is.
For a wise, though sometimes difficult to read, discussion of the question of animal intelligence I recommend Alasdair MacIntyres’s book Dependent Rational Animals. I wouldn’t even attempt to summarize his ideas in a comment, but his thesis is that humans and animals possess a lot more in common than is typically recognized.Some higher animals, for example, exhibit behavior that seems courageous and which involves self-sacrifice. Your example seems to confirm this idea. Courage requires at least enough intelligence to know that there is danger yet the creature still acts in the face of it. We might even say that the ape in your example has acted virtuously. It certainly worth thinking about.
Iwe:
When I was in college studying medieval philosophy we read some of the work of Moses Maimonides. I’m curious as to where he stands with Jewish thought.
I agree. Thankful to have read it.
Maimonides, or Rambam, is the archetypal aristotelian Jewish philosopher. In his day they burned his books. Now he is considered quite mainstream.
I believe that Greek, Christian and Islamic influences on Rambam have not been widely acknowledged. Those influences are often not consistent with the Torah itself. For example, Rambam spends a lot of time discussing the concepts of Truth and Perfection, which are not Torah notions at all.
It is very comforting indeed to encounter another Ricochet member who is well versed in weekly parsha, and a follower of Rabbi Sacks teaching
I dunno. I am not sure which is the chicken….
I don’t know if I even am religious at this point, but I was raised a Christian on the Old Testament (Torah ) stories, and the idea that they are somehow unrelated to Christian theology seems so strange to me! I can’t help it: Abraham , Isaac, Jacob, Joseph are no more yours than mine!
I’m not a Catholic, though. But I have to say Catholicism seems more OT than NT to me. In the OT it’s all “Because I said so!”
I had never thought about what you said about the matriarchs, and other important mothers of the OT, like Hannah, being infertile. H’mmm…so what other women do effortlessly, they must beseech God for, and he often makes them wait till they’re so old it is an obvious miracle, like Sarah, or at least have been married long enough that their childlessness has occasioned comment, like Rachael and Hannah. But in the NT God doesn’t even wait till the woman has experienced sex, He impregnates a virgin. Mysterious ways.
“Mouth full of game”–what an image! I’m going to see what the KJV has for that phrase.* But, are you saying not all humans are created in God’s image? That some are born more animal than human?
* ” a cunning hunter, a man of the field”
Hypatia, I have to respond to your descriptions of Catholicism as ‘more OT than NT’ and “Because I said so…”. Speaking for myself, I’m grateful for what iWe and others here have added to my understanding of the Jewish resonances in my faith community. Further, doctrinal descriptions and behavioral traditions are not so much meant to be rules and regulations, lived out in servile fear of a gotcha G-d, as they are a roadmap for the journey of a committed believer’s daily life. I feel sorry for those whose experience isn’t now, or hasn’t ever been, one of joy and hope on a freely-chosen path….
I meant, in the OT, doing good, doing right, is obeying God, no matter what He commands. It could be “Kill ’em all!””and very often was. And if you’re a Catholic you believe that if you follow certain rules and rituals, salvation is assured, right? After the Reformation there was a kind of mental illness called “salvation anxiety” because now, eternity depended on what was in each individual’s heart and conscience. How did you KNOW if you were offending? Any stray thought might damn you! How could you ever be good enough? Whereas before, you could pretty much buy that assurance, or perform a ritual that provided it.
I’m sure this isn’t you, Nanda, but my Catholic friends don’t know the Bible very well. They can’t believe some of the OT stuff I relate is really in there! And the Mariolatry, whereas to a Bible-thumping Prot , Mary comes out with the Christmas decorations and is packed away again in January..
I’m just explaining where I’m coming from. I don’t mean to take away from or denigrate the ecstatic experience of your faith.
Right on. Me too. And my kids after me!
Well, there may be some sense in which that can be said–even presuming the total accuracy of Christian theology. After all, Paul is speaking to Gentiles when he says (in Romans 3) that there are advantages to being a Jew, such as their having been “entrusted with the oracles of G-d.”
But you are correct: Christian theology is mostly weirdness and gibberish without the Old Testament stories and prophecies.
Christ says he comes to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, and references the testimony of the prophets from the beginning of the Old Testament (Abel in Genesis) to the end (a Zechariah in 2 Chronicles, I believe, which was at the end in the Jewish organization of the OT if memory serves). Then Paul points out in Galatians that the Torah’s promises to Abraham and his seed are older than the Mosaic covenant at Sinai and are not superseded by it and are unconditional–not premised on our keeping the law. If Jesus is not the Christ, if Yeshua is not the Messiah and the seed of Abraham and the fulfillment of Genesis 12 and 15 and so on, then Christianity is mostly rubbish.
Mostly rubbish, and what’s left would be some bits of ethics hardly worth any more than Confucius or Aristotle or Kant.
I think he was saying that some choose not to live like the images of G-d they are.
Of course not, Hypatia…I would recommend this site and this one to you, your friends, and others who might want to learn more.
Surely you jest. The only site to recommend is this site.
And if it’s not theological enough, just . . . start a conversation on the right topic.
Har-dee-har-har, @saintaugustine. :- D