Lesson Three- What do we believe?
July 16
https://youtu.be/RbhI3CSyi0Q
Only after we have started with the People and the
Torah can we then get to what we believe.
A God who asks questions: Where are you?
Basic beliefs and doctrines
Religion, in Jewish thought, did not begin with
Moses, nor even with Eve, Cain, Noah.
Chanoch, Enoch, is seen as one “ who walks with God”
in the generations before Noah.
There are academies of Torah study, in rabbinic
tradition, headed by Shem ( Semite) and Ever( Hebrew), the ancestors of Abraham.
Even prophecy, the Rabbis declared was not limited to Jews/Israelites, but
Balaam was proof that God spoke to all people. Job was an example of a
righteous person, though clearly not an Israelite.
What we have as unique is the sense that we have
encountered God as a people, rather than as individuals. That is our
uniqueness, and all else derives from it.
GOD
In the Torah, we have a sense of who God is not. We are not commanded to believe in
God, since that is a given of human experience.
In the beginning, Bereshit, --makes the presumption
that we know there is a God- now, we are told “ Whatabout it”.
We have the introduction of a God who creates, in an
orderly fashion, establishes the universe and what exists in a systematic,
non-chaotic order.That’s chapter one. Then we have chapter two-three- four—that
introduces us to a sense of God who “ walks in the Garden” as the One who is in
deep pain because of our choices.
Absent from the Jewish God is the endowment of
physical human characteristics—they may have been there in earlier levels, but
gradually removed—and the absence of sexuality from God- Again, there may have
been, in ancient Israel, a tradition of a consort, but that is removed.
So God no longer has human endowments- but in reverse,
the very flawed and failing human, is now endowed with divine attributes,
of wisdom, creativity, and the power to choose between good and evil. Hence , the
Garden of Eden is closed- precisely because we have eaten of the ability to
discern good from evil, and as a consequence, have the power to choose evil.
Beautiful midrash—there us a parade of Roman soldiers
and they are leading a sacred object- and shout” make way for the image of the
gods of Rome.
Response: “Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: ‘A procession of angels passes
before each person, and the heralds go before them, saying, “Make way for the
image of God!”’ (Deut. Rab., 4:4)
Introduce God as source of Justice ,God knows that
Abraham will teach his descendants to carry out God’s path, of Tzedek u mishpat—so
Abraham rides up to the challenge at Sodom- Hashofet Kol Haaretz”( Gen 18)
God as the player in human history- Joseph accepts
his brothers because he knows it was God’s plan to save many lives.(Gen 50).
This theme universalized by Amos 9
הֲל֣וֹא כִבְנֵי֩ כֻשִׁיִּ֨ים אַתֶּ֥ם לִ֛י בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל
נְאֻם־יְהֹוָ֑ה הֲל֣וֹא אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל הֶעֱלֵ֙יתִי֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם
וּפְלִשְׁתִּיִּ֥ים מִכַּפְתּ֖וֹר וַאֲרָ֥ם מִקִּֽיר׃
You are the
like Ethiopians to me. Behold, I brought out Israel form Egypt, just as I
brought out the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from KIr
Our knowledge
of God is taken away from the physical: Moses wants to see God. No one can see
God, but only discern the consequence, in reference to human behavior-Moses at
the Golden Calf- Adonai Adonai= God as merciful and forgiving.
We have the
concept of the unity of God—as expressed in the Shma-
It can be
translated: Adonay is our God, Adonay is alone- not to be identified with any
other god,
Adonay- is the
sole one, not to be worshipped together with any other god.
Adonay- is
unique- that which is completely other, different than any entity, object,
power, force.
Adonay- is the
only God that exists- all others are
false, mythology, vanity, the fabrication of their human makers.
Adonay- now, in
our translation- One- a unity.
These are essential
to separate ourselves from the pagan concept, of multiple forces, multiple
values, in the universe.
Then, we need
to separate ourselves from the newly emergent philosophy of Zoroastrianism, the
religion of the very people who save us from exile, the Persians: the universe
as a conflict between good and evil, light and dark, with the belief that good
will prevail. That duality will affect Jewish thinking in centuries later, but
Isaiah will not have of it:
Isaiah would make that concept central-( Ch
45)
יוֹצֵ֥ר אוֹר֙ וּבוֹרֵ֣א חֹ֔שֶׁךְ עֹשֶׂ֥ה שָׁל֖וֹם וּב֣וֹרֵא רָ֑ע
אֲנִ֥י יְהוָ֖ה עֹשֶׂ֥ה כָל־אֵֽלֶּה׃ (ס)
Who fashions
light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates evil. I ,Adonay, do all of
this!
We would now
have the concept of a God who is above and behind all the contradictions of
existence, the underlying unity of all existence, transcendent, yet, in Jewish
thought, at once, immanent-directly felt and present.
That statement
is adapted by the Rabbis as one of the opening concepts of the morning worship:
The stark harshness is modified:
. “Blessed art thou,
O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who forms light and creates darkness, who makes
peace and creates all things.”
( u vorey et hakol)
This is the God
who not only created, past tense, but, again, in the morning prayer, mehadesh
bechol yom tamid maaseh bereshit—who renews the creation daily. ( Causa in esse,
Causa in fieri, the cause of existence, the cause of continuation), in medieval
philosophy
This idea of a
transcendant God, beyond all that
exists, yet, immanent, one whose presence is directly felt, is imbedded in the
structure of our worship, the core of the prayers: Barukh atah- it is an
intentional contradiction:
Blessed are
You- personal- then shifts to 3rd person, after addressing God
personally—Adonay, Hamotzi—the bringer of bread, Asher kidshanu- who sanctified
us.
( like modern
English, Biblical Hebrew does not have the formal “ You” of other European
languages-“Tu-Usted” “Tu-Vous” Du-Sie.) Later, Martin Buber would play on this,
and speak of “ Ich-Du” I -Thou( old English-you, close and caring).Heschel
would expand the term to “We-Thou”.
Do we have a
systematic theology?
We have had two
distinct ways of thinking—when it came to action, we had methods of analysis
and of ordering our formal collective behavior. However, when it came to
belief, we relied more on metaphors, literary phrases, poetic terms.
How do we come
to belief, for example:
The Illuminated
Palace:About Abraham:
“ a man who was
traveling from place to place when he saw a castle aglow. He said, "Is it
possible that this castle lacks a person to look after it?" The owner of
the building looked at him and said to him, 'I am the master of the
castle.'" What happened with Abraham our father was similar. He said, “Is
it possible that this universe lacks a person to look after it?," the Holy
Blessed One looked at him and said to him, 'I am the Master of the
Universe.'"( Bereshit Raba 39:1)
For our sages,
it came out of experience- personal and collective
As for
definitions- best by verbal, not physical. Images:
“k’b’yachol”—as
if we could describe-this is what we would say:
Song of Songs
Rabbah 1:9 On the comparison of the hero to a horse and Rabbi Akiba’s
interpretation on the Song of the Sea:
‘Pharaoh
mounted a stallion, and the Holy One blessed be He, as it were, revealed
Himself on a stallion.
God as “
Shekhina” – the presence, begalut- that is in exile.
Makom- The
world is not God’s place, but God is the world’s place.Ber Rabbah 68
שֶׁהוּא מְקוֹמוֹ
שֶׁל עוֹלָם וְאֵין עוֹלָמוֹ מְקוֹמוֹ,
And he came
upon (vayifga') the place (Genesis 28:11) - Rav Huna says, in the name of Rabbi Ami: why do we substitute
the name of the Holy Blessed One and use Place? Because God is the Place of the
world, and the world is not the place of God. From what is written "Here
there is a place with Me" (Exodus 33:21) the Holy Blessed One is the place of the world and the world is
not the place of the Holy Blessed One.
The Greeks
did much better job of organized reason, and while some of it may
have influence Jewish thinking in our first encounters, by the time of our 2nd
encounter, Greek thought through Islam, we were open to this kind of
systematization.
The prime
example- Philo of Alexandria, in our first encounter, who applies the Greek
method of turning all ancient texts into metaphors for philosophical concepts. (Actually
influences early Christianity more than Jewish thought)
Rav Saadia
Gaon, R”Sa.g, who applies neo-Platonic concepts of the realm of ideas to Jewish
thought.( Emunot v Deot)
Most famous-
and most controversial- Rabbi Moses ben Maimon- Rambam
,turns
Aristotle into a Jewish thinker ( almost). Asides from his very cryptic Guide for the Perplexed,
intended for only a choice few students), he created a philosophical foundation
for the common man in his Mishneh Torah= the only work of Jewish law that
starts with the issue of belief.
In Rambam,
there is only the negative attribute: We can only know what God is Not- if we
say a word about God, such as, good- it can only mean Good in a sense that no human
can comprehend: Maimonides writes in Chapter 50 of
the Guide, “Those who believe that God is One and that He has many
attributes declare the Unity with their lips and assume the plurality in their
thoughts.”
For the
philosopher, there is need of proofs:
The first
mover- on the premise that you can not have an infinite chain of causes( which
Rambam himself claims he could solve), there must be the first, unmoved mover,
to start all motion.
There is a very
neat medieval proof of God, St Anselm: God is “that than which a greater cannot be thought”- since to
exist is greater than not to exist, therefore God exists. It’s very neat,
compact, completely self-fulfilling. Does it beat the intuition of the
existence of God that permeates all of Torah? As the medieval stated it,
Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology.” It’s nice company, but it can’t beat
the real thing.
Finally, there is a Kabbalistic attempt at understanding God,
as an unfolding from the Ein Sof-Infinite- or “ Ein- No Thing- through the
aspects of Chochma-Binah-Daat=wisdom, understanding and knowledge, through the
Sefirot- ( Number-also sphere) through the Yesod-foundation-into Malkhut- the
feminine- on to creation:
God as a flow chart
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PS- the Kabbalistic word for the emanation of God through the Sefirot and down to the created world is "Shefa", a flow.
Or as the form of Adam Kadmon-the primordial human
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