Martin Buber has always been a great inspiration to me. His views on Jewish mysticism are grounded in the interpersonal realm of the ethical. We meet God when we respect the Other who is before us. Emmanuel Levinas expresses a similar thought in many of his writings as well, but Buber still remains my favorite.

Historically, people have often tried to control God through any kind of magical means at their disposal. The scriptural prohibition against making graven images is predicated upon the belief that man can control God; only in one’s imagination is such an absurd thought possible. Buber touches on this theme in a number of different works, but in the interest of time, I will cite one of my favorite quotes Buber is best known for concerning the danger of gnosis and magic that I think cuts to the heart of our problem today among certain types of hucksters like Rabbi Batzri.

“The two spiritual powers of gnosis and magic, masquerading under the cloak of religion, threaten more than any other powers the insight into the religious reality, into man’s dialogical situation. They do not attack religion from the outside; they penetrate into religion, and once inside it, pretend to be its essence. Because Judaism has always had to hold them at bay and to keep separate from them, its struggle has been largely internal. This struggle has often been misunderstood as a fight against myth. But only an abstract-theological monotheism can do without myth, and may even see it as its enemy; living monotheism needs myth, as all religious life needs it, as the specific form in which its central events can be kept safe and lastingly remembered and incorporated.

Israel first confronted gnosis and magic   in its two great neighboring cultures: gnosis, the perception of the knowable mystery, in the Babylonian teaching about the stars whose power holds all earthly destinies in control, a teaching which was later to reach its full development in the Iranian doctrine concerning the world-soul imprisoned in the cosmos; and magic,  the perception of the masterable mystery, in the Egyptian doctrine that death can be conquered and everlasting salvation attained by the performance of prescribed formulas and gestures. The tribes of Jacob could only become Israel by disentangling themselves from both gnosis and magic.  He who imagines that he knows and holds the mystery fast can no longer face it as his “Thou”; and he who thinks that he can conjure and utilize it, is unfit for the venture of true mutuality . . . ” [1]

In another passage, we discover why the principle of the I and Thou offers the best approach to experiencing a spiritual connectedness with the Divine that goes infinitely farther than the banalization of Kabbalah we are witnessing today. While I am not completely sure whether Buber’s argument on gnosis is quite accurate, but I do think his understanding on magic and its relationship to Torah is right on the money. Buber explains further:

“This universal at-onement finds expression in the Jewish concept of yihud, or unification. Yihud is the proclamation of the oneness of God — not the passive acknowledgment of this oneness, a statement of a subject about an object, but an act of meeting, ‘the dynamic form of the divine unity itself.’ It does not take place through creedal profession or magic manipulation, but through the concrete meeting of I and Thou by which the profane is sanctified and the mundane hallowed. It is ‘the continually renewed confirmation of the unity of the Divine in the manifold nature of His manifestations.’ This confirmation must be understood in a quite practical way: it is brought about through man’s remaining true ‘in the face of the monstrous contradictions of life, and especially in the face of . . . the duality of good and evil.’ The unification which thus takes place ‘is brought about not to spite these contradictions, but in a spirit of love and reconciliation . . .’

——

Notes:

[1] Martin Buber and Will Herberg (ed.)  The Writings of Martin Buber (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), 261-262.

[2] Maurice S. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue (New York: Routledge, 2002), 167.

In Turkey today, the Turkish police discovered a grizzly sight.  They discovered the body of a young 16 year old girl who was buried alive by her relatives in the city of Adiyaman, southeastern Turkey. Her name for the moment remains for now, anonymous. The police found her body in a  sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta. Police believe it was an honor killing because she “shamed” her family by talking to teenage boys. So far, the father and and grandfather  have been arrested and held in custody pending trial.  The girl’s mother was arrested but was later released. An autopsy shows that she was alive and conscious as she was being buried. Even more shocking is the fact that 200 such honor killings take place in Turkey a year. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that the annual worldwide total of honor-killing victims may be as high as 5,000, however even these statistics may not reveal the actual number of cases since most families who commit these crimes do not  exactly volunteer information to the local census Bureau.

When I discussed the incident with my good friend named Gloria, who lives in San Fransisco, she made several some poignant remarks relevant to our story.

“ What punishment was given to the boys who she supposedly consorted with? Probably nothing…fits right in with what I was saying about how men feel they have to control women at any cost…even to destroy one’s own child if she gives any appearance of impropriety. No issue is as important to men as that of controlling the sexuality or what passes for the sexuality of women…I got that message loud and clear when the orthodox rabbi once told me to stop singing…you probably remember how that ended up…I told the imperialistic rabbi at a boy’s hair cutting event I attended once (I also recall how he likened the boy’s hair to the first fruits. Really? Since when is hair a fruit?!) to wear ear plugs or to leave if he could not stand how he was aroused by the sound of my voice. It is always the men who want to control the women. As far as charm goes, these men have nothing to worry about, for it is highly unlikely any women will find these men the least bit appealing. ”

My friend Gloria also thinks one of the reasons why men hate women so much in these cultures is because men are wholly dependent upon women for their lives. Without a mother, they could not exist; they depend upon a mother’s care for the most vulnerable part of their lives. In addition, a woman’s sexual ability far exceeds a male, making these men feel inferior in so many other ways. So, they commit themselves to controlling the feminine because they resent their dependency on women. The image of God as “Father,” may indirectly contribute the exploitation of women, according to some scholars.

Carl G. Jung writes that every man has a feminine aspect to his personality that is in touch with the  inner feminine side of a man he refers to as the “anima,”that is always present in the unconscious of the male. The “anima,” stands in contrast to the animus, which represents masculine characteristics. Assertive women, according to Jung, are generally more in touch with the masculine aspect of their hidden personalities.

Misogyny is a transcultural and transhistorical phenomena. Among many religious societies, we see how gender barriers tend to be reified and rigid. Men are men, and women are women; a psychological integration of the genders is considered taboo because it is so threatening to the  diminished male ego.  Consequently, when we observe the conflicts in Israel between the Haredi, Hassidic communities and the secular world, in almost every instance we find men attempting to control the women of their lives; weak people with puny egos will always try to exert power over people they perceive to be “weaker” than themselves.

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: “I am looking for God! I am looking for God!”

As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. ‘Have you lost him, then?’ said one. ‘Did he lose his way like a child?’ said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

“Where has God gone?” he cried. ‘I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. We are his murderers.”

In the 1960s, the “death of God” sparked considerable debate within Christian and Jewish theological circles. Its primary exponents were Thomas J. J. Altizer, William Hamilton, and Paul Van Buren. Despite the differences, these three agreed that a transcendent God is no longer a part of the contemporary human experience. Jewish thinkers approach the “death of God” theology with a variety of different responses.

Indeed, some Jewish thinkers led by Richard Rubenstein, contend that the horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima are proof enough that the traditional view of God as a Redeemer was not longer valid or religiously meaningful to the Post-Holocaust era, or as the common secular might say, “God has gone on vacation.” Richard Rubenstein claims that Auschwitz demonstrates human life has no essential value due to the lack of a transcendental purpose or process controlling the human condition. Ultimate meaning and purpose must derive from human beings and not from God. In effect, community has to take the place of God. Granted, religious precepts and rituals could still be maintained, but only as sociological and psychological props. Jews, as a result of the Holocaust, continue as a community but without the God of Judaism. Rubenstein’s view represents a broad segment of the secular Jewish intelligentsia. On the other hand, some Jewish scholars would argue differently, believing that the “death of God” theology points to a loss or absence of the Divine in our contemporary age. Jacob Neusner notes:

“I do not understand the question what the “God is dead” theologians are saying. It seems to me they may be saying two things. First, the experience of the sacred, or God, is no longer widely available; second, that experience is no longer available in classical ways. Both of these statements describe Jewish existence, and have for some time, though we prefer to phrase them differently. I think it is clear that God is hiding His face from the world. . . .We are no longer able to approach the gates of heaven, surely not open them with the keys that used to work. God is “dead” for many Jews. In the Jewish community, even the flame of the Yahrzeit candle long ago flickered out. In the synagogue, however, Jewry still keeps up the graveyard. I do not despair. We Jews have passed this way before.”[1]

Neusner’s evocative image of the “graveyard” is suggestive of numbness, death and detachment. This metaphor would certainly describe the spiritual life of many modern Jews. Neusner’s insightful words are revealing and may have antecedents in several rabbinic teachings that suggest that God has taken a leave of absence from the world. Some sages of the Talmud argued that the Divine Presence (a.k.a. the “Shekhinah”) has retreated to Heaven. In the words of the Midrash, “When the Temple was burned, the Holy One (blessed be He) cried and said:  I no longer have a seat upon earth. I shall remove my Shekhinah from there and ascend to my first habitation.”[2]

Emil Fackenheim, one of the leading post-Holocaust theologians of the 20^th century, observes:

Each denomination of Judaism seemed to want to keep God out of its modern religious lives.  It allowed no room for a God dwelling beyond the world, yet entering into it to seek out man. He was an irrational incursion into a rational universe. At the same time, in its more congenial moods, modern thought gave substitute offerings to a deist “First Cause” or Cosmic Process outside man and unrelated to him, or an idealistic God-idea within him. Faced with this basic challenge, and these substitute offerings, orthodox and liberal Jewish theology both compromised. Orthodoxy held fast to the Jewish God, but confined His essential activity to a conveniently remote Biblical and Talmudic past, acting as though the sacred documents of the past could be exempted from modern criticism. Liberalism, for its part, wishing a present God, compromised the Jewish God Himself, now using the terms of Deism, then those of idealism, and in its still surviving forms the terms of a cosmic evolutionism.[3]

Another thinker, Eugene Borowitz  also admits it is difficult to believe in a God after the Holocaust. He notes, “Any God who could permit the Holocaust, who could remain silent during it, who could hide His face while it dragged on, was not worth believing in. There might well be a limit to how much we could understand Him, but Auschwitz demanded an unreasonable suspension of understanding. In the face of such great evil, God, the good and the powerful, was too inexplicable, so men said, ‘God is dead…’” [4]

The conundrum is an old one that was formulated by the ancient Greek cynic named Epicurus, who wrote:

“If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to, then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing, then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing, then whence cometh evil?

If He is neither able nor willing, then why call Him God?”

The Catholic theologian Hans Kung gives the old Epicurean criticism a more modern reformulation:

Was God at Auschwitz? If God is God: all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good and loving, present everywhere, then of course God must have been at Auschwitz! But how could God have been at Auschwitz without preventing Auschwitz? How could God have looked on when the gas streamed out and the cremation ovens were burning?

Are the “death of God” philosophers and theologians correct? Maybe to some extent. However, one  could argue that the Holocaust laid bare some of our childish conceptions of God that we unfortunately never outgrew–the concept of a Deity who is “All-Powerful,” “Almighty,” does not exist. Such a deity is more the projection of human beings’ greatest wishes–just as Freud correctly diagnosed in his “Future of an Illusion.”

One could argue that God’s power always functions in tandem with human freedom; redemption in the Bible always requires human participation. Without human actors, there is no God of redemption. With respect to the Exodus, God requires that there be a Moses and Aaron; with respect to every redemptive story in the Tanakh, there are human beings who act as God’s agent of redemption. Why is this so? The answer is simple enough: Human beings reveal God’s Presence in times of sorrow, catastrophe, and loss. The question as Heschel correctly raised decades ago, is not, “Where was God during the Holocaust?” but, “Where was man?” Redemption never occurs in a spiritual vacuum.

(More to come…)

[2] Lamentations Rabbah 24.

[3] Emil Fackenheim, Quest For Past and Future–Essays in Jewish Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 5.

[4] Eugene Borowitz, The Masks Jews Wear: The Self-deceptions of American Jewry.

The fact that evil confronts good, gives man the possibility of victory.

— R. YEHIEL MICHAEL OF ZLOTSHOV, Hassidic Aphorism

Let us assume for a moment that the rabbis and the allegorical school represented by Philo of Alexandria and Gersonides are correct in identifying the serpent as a metaphor for the evil inclination. But why did God create the impulse for evil? Would humankind have been better off not having to deal with such an urge? The Zohar raises this question, and offers the reader a most intriguing thought-provoking response with respect to the phenomena of moral evil .

Should it be asked, ‘How can a man love Him with the evil inclination? Is not the evil inclination the seducer, preventing man from approaching the Blessed Holy One to serve him? How, then, can man use the evil inclination as an instrument of love for God?’ The answer lies in this, that there can be no greater service done to the Holy One than to bring into subjection the “evil inclination” by the power of love to the Holy One, blessed be He. For, when it is subdued and its power broken by man in this way, then he becomes a true lover of the Holy One, since he has learnt how to make the “evil inclination” itself serve the Holy One. Here is a mystery entrusted to the masters of esoteric lore. All that the Holy One has made, both above and below, is for the purpose of manifesting His Glory and to make all things serve Him. Now, would a master permit his servant to work against him, and to continually lay plans to counteract his will? It is the will of the Holy One that men should worship Him and walk in the way of truth that they may be rewarded with many benefits. How, then, can an evil servant come and counteract the will of his Master by tempting man to walk in an evil way, seducing him from the good way and causing him to disobey the will of his Lord? But, indeed, the “evil inclination” also does through this the will of its Lord.

It is as if a king had an only son whom he dearly loved, and just for that cause he warned him not to be enticed by bad women, saying that anyone defiled might not enter his palace. The son promised his father to do his will in love. Outside the palace, however, there lived a beautiful harlot. After a while the King thought: “I will see how far my son is devoted to me.” So he sent to the woman and commanded her, saying: “Entice my son, for I wish to test his obedience to my will.” So she used every trick in her book to lure him into her embraces. But the son, being good, obeyed the commandment of his father. He refused her allurements and thrust her from him. Then did the father rejoice exceedingly, and, bringing him in to the innermost chamber of the palace, bestowed upon him gifts from his best treasures, and showed him every honor. And who was the cause of all this joy? The harlot! Is she to be praised or blamed for it? To be praised, surely, on all accounts, for on the one hand she fulfilled the king’s command and carried out his plans for him, and on the other hand she caused the son to receive all the good gifts and deepened the king’s love to his son.[1]

The Zoharic passage just cited illustrates a remarkable concept that exists in many of the primal religions of the world, the notion of the coincidentia oppositorum, also known as “the reunion of opposites.” As Eliade has already noted, the lost memory of this unitive existence with reality emanates from a part of humanity that yearns to overcome the duality and opposites we now experience in a post-Fallen world. Eliade adds that: “On the level of presystematic thought, the mystery of totality embodies man’s endeavor to reach a perspective in which the contraries are abolished, the Spirit of Evil reveals itself as a stimulant for the Good. . . .”[2]