Passover is a time of asking questions, and I have a few. This year, though, the furor that surrounded Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and his sermons that dared to suggest that this Christian nation may actually be earning God’s wrath and damnation for some of its behavior, reminded me of an issue I’d first encountered in South Africa: The idea that the Passover/Exodus narrative of the Hebrews’ flight from Pharaoh and slavery doesn’t belong exclusively to any tribe, but is a universal tale of freedom into which suffering people everywhere are able to insert themselves. And also that even if your forebears were victims of injustice, you’re quite capable of being a perpetrator of injustice
I think the Rev. Wright furor offered many white Americans an introduction they found shocking to the reality that the black Church in America has always connected viscerally to the liberation narrative of the Biblical people of Israel, making that narrative their own as a source of succor for their own struggles and trials. Martin Luther King, remember, spoke of going to the top of the mountain and seeing the promised land, knowing that he might not make it there. In other words, casting himself as Moses. And it’s an ongoing, vibrant tradition that gives the African American church its special vitality.
The ability of oppressed people to find themselves in the Exodus narrative of liberation is, of course, precisely the point of that narrative. The problem in Egypt wasn’t simply that it was the Jews who lived in slavery; the problem was was slavery itself. And the antidote to slavery advocated in the Torah (the five Books of Moses) — human community constituted on the basis of law and justice rather than political authority claimed on divine grounds — is a universal one; it applies, absolutely equally, to everyone, and everyone is invited, as Moses did, to challenge authorities that offer anything less.
The God of Abraham, proclaimed as the one true god, is obviously everyone’s god; he’s not a tribal fetish; he’s been invoked precisely to challenge the sort of tribal fetish deities that the Egyptians had used to rationalize their system of oppression. So, the Passover/Exodus narrative has powerful resonance to all people of the Abrahamic faiths (and possibly others) who may find themselves confronting oppression.
But those who feel threatened by others’ demands for justice — oppressors who cloak their own abuses of others in pieties of Christian soldierhood or the Star of David as the brand icon of an occupation — get very uncomfortable when they realize that others see them as inheritors, not of the righteousness of the Biblical Hebrews’ flight to freedom, but of Pharaoh’s attempts to suppress the Israelites.
But throughout the Old Testament, the Jewish prophets are warning the Israelites to take nothing for granted. The mantle of righteousness cannot be inherited genetically (surely, the God of Abraham is not a racist who judges people by their DNA) or claimed simply through vigorous prayer and observance of ritual; it must be earned in one’s conduct in relation to others. Thus Hillel’s famous definition of Judaism while standing on one foot: “That which is hateful unto yourself, do not do unto others; all the rest is commentary.” In other words, it is only via the decency of your behavior in the world that you can be a good Jew.
Jews who commit injustices against others would be unequivocally condemned by the Jewish prophets, just as those who drop bombs on others or sentence them to death are plainly deluded when they claim to be guided by the inspirational example of Jesus. That, I think, is the essence of what Reverend Wright was saying in those passages that caused so much controversy — that God would damn, not bless an America that committed injustices. To which I’d add, in line with Rami Khouri’s profound challenge to Israeli journalists at the height of the last Lebanon war, an injustice committed under a flag bearing the Star of David would be fiercely condemned by the Biblical Jewish prophets.
It was easy to see how little our Jewish genetic lineage did to make us really Jewish in the South Africa of my youth, where every Passover, we sat around seder tables singing, in a barely understood Hebrew, of the days when we were slaves, while the black women who lived in our backyards under domestic labor system not that far removed from slavery, carried in steaming tureens of matzoh ball soup and tzimmes. We may have convinced ourselves that our DNA entitled us to claim this story as our own, but it was abundantly clear that in the South African context, most Jews had thrown in their lot with Pharoah, while the Israelites were working in their kitchens.
The mantle of justice associated with the Torah prophets, it seemed to me later, was nobody’s birthright; it had to be earned.
As a young activist heading out into the townships every weekend to meetings where communities were planning to resist eviction or burying those who had fallen in the fight against the regime, I was intrigued to hear the preachers and ordinary people couch their own struggles firmly in the narratives of the Exodus.
But around my own seder tables, the descendants of Pharoah’s slaves paid scant attention to the plight of those in their kitchens. They were discussing real estate and accounting scams — and, of course, how long it might be before “the schwartzes” (yiddish for “blacks”) would rise up and spoil the party.
If Hillel was right (and I believe he was) that Judaism is less about rituals and the minutiae of halachic law than it is about the ethical treatment of others, I can safely say that I learned very little of Judaism in the more than 200 hours of family Seders I sat through in South Africa. In keeping with thousands of years of tradition, we always kept a chair empty and a glass full in case the Prophet Elijah showed up. Looking back, I shudder to think what he would have made of the spectacle had he actually accepted the invitation.
I suspect he’d have dragged us over the coals in language not unlike that used by Reverend Wright. A friend once told me that his father, an Anglican priest, believed that whereas Christians had to work their way into heaven, Jews were basically on the guest list; our entry to Paradise was assured, by virtue of the fact that we’d been born Jewish. I thought that was a remarkably silly idea. Not only that; it’s remarkably dangerous, too, because it rationalizes moral laziness and injustice and violence committed in the name of a false righteousness. Unfortunately, I suspect, my friend’s father’s belief that as Jews, we are genetic entitlement to God’s favor, is all too widespread. Passover, and the universal tale of oppression and freedom it celebrates, is a good opportunity to burst that bubble.
Good post. I didn’t get the shock over Rev. Wright’s sermons — sure, they were overblown and occasionally ridiculous, but it was the fact that there was anger in them that seemed to surprise so many conservative whiteys. “Many black people are angry at America? Whatever in our history could cause them to think that way?”
Also, good acknowledgment of the irrelevance of genetics in God’s eyes. Even after Moses led them out of Egypt, the Jews in Exodus kept fucking up and getting smoted. (That tense is wrong, but it sounds cooler.) It seems that even the Chosen Peeps aren’t any better than the rest of us.
Thanks for the great post Tony.
Thought folks might be interested to see this Haggadah supplement that focuses on the 60th anniversary of the Nakba – http://notimetocelebrate.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/notimetocelebrate_haggadah_supplement.pdf.
It is part of a broader campaign called No Time to Celebrate! Jews Remember the Nakba – http://notimetocelebrate.wordpress.com/.
Great post, Tony. As Christian (specifically Catholic), I’d like to make a small contribution.
First, it’d be more accurately to say that Passover/Exodus is the tale of the one true God liberating his people from slavery. In the Old Testament God’s people were the sons of Israel, and the Lord’s intervention in history was only related to them. In the New Testament, Jesus opened the doors to the whole of mankind to become the new God’s people, with the Jews being invited first.
In line with that, Dt 6:4-5 should precede Hillel’s response for a better concise definition of Judaism. This is in line with Jesus’ response when asked “Which is the first of all the commandments?” (Mk 12:29-31) Jesus replied, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Now, the freedom that Jesus brought to us is not temporal, but spiritual. But anyone who has been spiritually liberated (saved) by Jesus cannot temporarily oppress other human beings lest losing his salvation. That’s the Catholic viewpoint, and probably also the Orthodox. In contrast, for some Protestant interpretations, as long as you believe that Jesus has saved you, your behavior doesn’t really matter. Luther’s “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly” is well known. Less known is that in the same letter to Melanchton he also wrote: “No sin will separate us from the Lamb (Jesus), even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day.”
Really? Luther wrote: “we commit fornication… a thousand times a day.”
Wow. Luther was quite the man.
Re. the Chosen People bit, sorry to say but I do perceive a conflict of interest. I mean, if a Buddhist prophet had written that Jews were God’s Chosen People, OK, that might be divine revelation. What do I know? But there’s a certain chutzpah for someone to write down “Hey, God just told me my tribe is His fave.”
Again, I am not saying it didn’t happen that way. I am saying the scribe should have then replied “Look, God, if I write this down I am going to get a lot of grief for it, because it does sound a little self-serving, don’t you think? I mean, put yourself in our shoes. We’re going to have lots of enemies and they’ll rummage through everything we’ve written and use that to persecute us. So how about toning it down a little?
Plus, God, I hate to say it, but it won’t help Your credibility if You call us your favorite sons now but You won’t lift a finger when some deranged Teuton slaughters 6 million of us.
Or perhaps you meant Chosen in a different sense… So how about a simpler statement like this: “God Spits on Anti-Semites.” It still has that biblical lyricism You seem to like, and you know, down the road, these words might work out better for us.
—
Words above to be read in the spirit of light-hearted satire. My apologies to those who believe there’s no such thing as light-hearted religious satire. In fact, there is.
good post..the ideal of jewishness has nothing to do with a book,a country or a building.. it’s about justice or better yet fairness..do we really need these huge religeous organization to learn what our parents should have told us…treat people as you yourself would like to be treated…this may not solve the worlds problems but it is a good place to start.
Often read your pieces here Tony but this one was particularly sharp and moving, especially your description of sitting around the table. It’s just a shame that many people — the people in charge — don’t think that way, and maybe never will.
I don’t want to spoil the fun here. But there is no mention of Jesus.
Good piece, we adopted it as Passover piece of the Occupation Magazine!
all whites are evil, racist, blue-eyed devils. they are responsible for all the evil that has ever graced the face of the earth. i can’t wait until the day that we, the chosen few, can “palistinian” all of them. and then, and only then, can the colored races and jews live in utopian harmony with the earth.
thus says the talmud.
Vox Deserto has a bit of anti-Protestant prejudice. I’ve never seen such a phenomenon before and am bemused.
Since I did not study theology I cannot answer his assertions but they smell like slander. Protestants think they can sin as much as they like, as long as they accept Jesus? Hmmm… If somebody wrote such a thing about Muslims or Jews, I’d cry bigotry.
I don’t quite see the point of Deserto’s anti-Protestant smear, but such sectarian nastiness seems unworthy of the followers of Jesus.
There is no possibility that the Exodus story can be historical in anything like it’s Biblical form. The most likely explanation is that it is a folk memory of the Hyksos period. Historians writing a thousand years after the events they were describing credited the Hyksos with conquering Egypt with superor weaponry (chariot and improved bow). Some modern Egyptologists think that a gradual moving in and taking over better explains the evidence. Best source on this is still Donald B. Redford’s Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times.
Doesn’t take much searching to find an analysis of the Martin Luther statement on sin, with a survey of Catholic views on Luther.
http://www.ntrmin.org/Be%20a%20sinner%20and%20sin%20boldly%20web.htm
Here’s a quote from a Catholic publication, found in the link above:
“Luther had failed to find peace of soul in ascetic self-discipline and efforts at “good works.” He never declared a good life unnecessary. His “pecca fortiter sed crede fortius” (sin boldly but believe still more firmly) was not meant to be an encouragement to yield to sin without scruple. He intended simply that however great a sinner one may be, granted repentance, he can be justified solely by faith. But to be zealous for good works, thinking them to be a means to salvation, was to manifest a lack of faith in God’s power to save.”” Leslie Rumble, The Disaster of “By Faith Alone” (This Rock vol. 14, no. 2, Feb. 2003).
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The Bible does not indicate that Jews were exclusively the Chosen. Instead, the Old Testament teaches that all 12 tribes were the Chosen. In the New Testament, all who acknowledge Jesus as Messiah are now also to be included in this grouping as Abraham’s heirs.
See Galatians 3:29.
This means that Muslims are now also among the Chosen since they acknowledge Jesus as Messiah.
See Koran, Sura 4, Line 169.
Therefore, a Happy Pesach or Passover to EVERYONE!
To Leila Abu-Saba:
“they smell like slander” — slander: a false and defamatory oral statement about a person
“Deserto’s anti-Protestant smear” — smear: a usually unsubstantiated charge or accusation against a person
First, I try not to qualify another person’s statements as slander or smear without first researching the topic until obtaining a satisfactory degree of certitude. Anyway, I accept the burden of proof that my statement was not false, while apologizing to Tony and thanking him for his patience, because this issue definitely strays from his topic.
Exhibit 1:
http://preachrblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/roman-view-of-luther.html
By the “Associate Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Racine, WI”
“The part I bolded, I think, is actually a fair articulation of Lutheranism (though not complete, of course).”
(Quoting from the bolded text:)
“Be a sinner and sin on bravely, but have stronger faith and rejoice in Christ, who is the victor of sin, death, and the world. Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the abiding place of justice: sin must be committed. To you it ought to be sufficient that you acknowledge the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, the sin cannot tear you away from him, even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders”
Exhibit 2:
http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=5895&key=34751023
(Quote:)
As Luther once wrote to Melanchthon, “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world.”
Having proved that my statement was not false, what was its point? In line with Tony’s (definitely correct) statement that “the Jewish prophets are warning the Israelites to take nothing for granted. The mantle of righteousness cannot be inherited genetically”, I wanted to point out the parallelism between the tendency among some Jews that he was denouncing and the views of some Christian branches.
So the New Testament worked out an arrangement so any believer in Jesus is among the Chosen? And the Koran followed suit by declaring Muslims the Chosen? Then
I guess there’s nothing to stop the Pastafarians (aka Flying Spaghetti Monster churchgoers) to discover that, according to Abrahamic principles, they’re Chosen, too.
Why is everyone so eager to call themselves Chosen?
Is there a religion of the Unchosen?
To prove that my statement was not false (and hence neither slander nor smear):
Exhibit 1:
http://preachrblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/roman-view-of-luther.html
By the “Associate Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Racine, WI”
“The part I bolded, I think, is actually a fair articulation of Lutheranism (though not complete, of course).”
(Quoting from the bolded text:)
“Be a sinner and sin on bravely, but have stronger faith and rejoice in Christ, who is the victor of sin, death, and the world. Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the abiding place of justice: sin must be committed. To you it ought to be sufficient that you acknowledge the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, the sin cannot tear you away from him, even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders”
Exhibit 2:
http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=5895&key=34751023
As Luther once wrote to Melanchthon, “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world.”
Now, what was the point of my satement? In line with Tony’s (definitely correct) statement that “the Jewish prophets are warning the Israelites to take nothing for granted. The mantle of righteousness cannot be inherited genetically”, I wanted to point out the parallelism between the tendency among some Jews that he was denouncing and the views of some Christian branches.
oy vey…nobody’s chosen…wake up…is it SOOO revolutionary to think that you should treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated…seems pretty pedestrian to me…
I have just finished reading Haaretz review on Ofri Ilani’s book,”When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?”.The auther attempts to prove that Jews living in Israel and other places are not at all the decendants of ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the first and second Temple period”.In the third chapter titled “The Invention of the Diaspora”,the auther refuses the notion that jews were exiled from their land.The auther argues that such exile never happened.In replying to the question of who are the real decendants of the Kingdom of Judah,the auther states that,”{t}he chances that the Palestinians are the true decendants of Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its decendants”.In realty there were no chosen people nor there was an exidus,it was all fabricated by the Zionist movementduring the late19th-early20th century.Exile of the Jewish people was originally a Christian myth depicting the event as a devine punishment for the Jewish refusal to accept Christian Gospel.Furthemore,the auther defines the true ancestory of the current Jews inhabiting Israel as being decendants of the Khazari nation which converted into Judaism in the 8th century and was desolved in the 10th century after its defeat by the Mongols.For those interested in finding the truth about what is happening here in the Middle-East, this book can open the eye to so many illusions preventing the truth to take hold.
>> revolutionary to think that you should treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated
It’s not revolutionary at all, in the sense that revolutions do happen whereas that wonderful principle, well…
Although maybe I am jumping to conclusions. Perhaps Bush did follow the Golden Rule after all.
Perhaps he wants to be waterboarded in Gitmo. Perhaps he’d like to be starved in Gaza. Perhaps he’d like his daughters to be forced into prostitution on the streets of Damascus. Perhaps those ferocious defenders of the First Amendment in our press corps should just ask him.
JEWS,MUSLIMS,CHRITIANS…ETC ALL THESE DO IS FURTHER SEPORATE US SO IT IS EASIER TO IDENTIFY AND HATE THE “OTHER”
“This means that Muslims are now also among the Chosen since they acknowledge Jesus as Messiah.
See Koran, Sura 4, Line 169.”
Not in my Koran.
How, exactly, does the celebration of a spate of “collective punishment” delivered by a vengeful, spiteful parody of a a deity (verily, I will harden pharoah’s heart, so I can justify imposing plagues and punishments–THEN I’ll make him let my people go…) differ from the Orange marches down Antrim Road?
This year I have boycotted the triumphalist party…
Iron Age fairy tales…wake up…use your head
Another inspiring and uplifting post, Tony.
Regarding Bernard’s comments about Bush daughters: it’s not uncommon for the girls these days to follow in the family business.
Leila–
I’m Protestant–Vox’s comment is a part of a centuries-old polemic between (many, not all) Protestants and (many, not all) Catholics on the nature of how we obtain salvation. The Protestants claim that we are saved by grace, not good deeds, and Luther’s comment sounds like his typical hyperbolic over-the-top way of saying that we’re all sinners and if good deeds were the way we were saved, we’d all be in trouble. Luther bases this view on various writing of Paul. Of course, being Luther he overstates it. And Vox runs with it. That’s the tradition in this kind of theological debate. Most Protestants would say that anyone who actually went around sinning as much as possible was in reality demonstrating that they weren’t really serious about accepting Christ.
And yeah, this is completely off-topic.
“surely, the God of Abraham is not a racist who judges people by their DNA”
Yes, he does. Passover gets its very name from the the fact that God “passed over” the houses of the Jews as he was murdering all the first born male Egyptian children.
The old testament is nothing but the story of a very local, very tribal God siding with his people in the most barbaric fashion against every other race. It is replete with genocide, infaticide and slaughter ordered by God against anyone who gets in the way of his people. He is not the God of all people, only of the Jews. That Christians and Muslims have adopted him and spread the word that he is everyones God is one of the great absurdities of religion. Check my link if you would like to know how many people God killed!
Well, Donald, it is off-topic, and I really didn’t need to stick my nose in it & argue with Vox in Deserto, but at least I learned something. I grew up in such a Protestant intellectual household that I’d never heard that anybody had a beef with Martin Luther about anything. My dad was an Eastern Rite Catholic but he didn’t believe – he just liked church history. My mom minored in religion, was a Methodist minister’s daughter, and hung out with Protestant theologians. I remember discussions about the Reformation with professor friends when I was a teenager. This controversy never crossed my radar.
Just goes to show that any 2 sects can find some reason to malign each other if they really, really want to. My Methodist grandfather was deeply suspicious of Catholics and profoundly prejudiced against “the Papacy”. He found my father’s religion much more disturbing than his Arab identity. Huh. By the time I was growing up it all seemed so pointless.
I am just surprised to see that some people still keep the old enmities going. Oh well. I’ll pray for Vox.
Simon Says:
—————————-
Check my link if you would like to know how many people God killed!
—————————-
Tell me Simon, how many people did “enlightened atheists” like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and others kill?
Tony, in his ongoing attempt to claim that there is a new form of Judaism which he claims is “unversalistic”, unlike existing traditional Judaism, gives us the famous quote of Hillel:
“That which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor, all the rest is commentary, go and study”.
Then Tony tells us:
————————————
If Hillel was right (and I believe he was) that Judaism is less about rituals and the minutiae of halachic law than it is about the ethical treatment of others….
————————————
Well, Tony, let’s read Hillel’s comment IN FULL, not selectively as you do. He says “the rest is commentary..go and study”. What, Tony, is “the rest”. It is the rest of the Torah. What is in this Torah? 613 Commandments. Among them are “Love your neighbor as yourself”, “do not use false weights and measures”, “love the stranger”, “if the donkey of a person you don’t like is collapsing under a burden, you must help lift him up”, “do not bear a grudge”, “do not be vindictive”. You like those, right Tony? But these are only PART of the 613 commandments. There are also others “do not eat pork”, “do not each shrimp”, “do not light fire on the Sabbath day”, “set up a state in Eretz Israel (whose borders are specified repeatedly) and appoint a King to rule this state”, “set up a Holy Temple in Jerusalem and conduct a sacrificial service there” (this last one is in temporary abeyance due to technical reasons). These are also part of the whole package. Hillel never says, as you seem to indicate, that the “ritual laws” are unimportant. He is saying that one who ONLY cares about the ritual laws and not the interpersonal ones is missing the main message of the Torah, but recall he says “the rest *(including the ‘ritual laws’) is commentary”, meaning that you can’t really understand the “love your neighbor as yourself” stuff without the “ritual laws” as well, whose observance is supposed to lead to a refinement of the human soul by making a Jew aware that every act, i.e. eating, sleeping, speaking, marital relations, business dealings, etc which has Jewish laws associated with them, is of cosmic importance. (Non-Jews are also bound by SOME of the laws of the Torah, but not the “ritual” ones). The Torah is a complete package and it has been historically proven that attempts to throw out the “ritual” side of Judaism while supposedly retaining the “ethical” side ends up leading to the whole thing vanishing.
I should clarify that when I said that “non-Jews are bound by some of the laws of the Torah, but not by the ritual ones”, I meant to say that non-Jews are indeed bound by ethical laws prohibiting theft, violence, dishonest business practices and the others which define civilized behavior, but they are not bound by the ones such as Sabbath observance, most dietary prohibitions, etc.
Rituals or no rituals, books or no books, and without any theological angle: ascribing spiritual superiority (and that’s what it is to righteously claim a certain land or a certain moral right to use violence) to a particular group on the pure basis of that group’s (or any group’s for that matter) own mythical story is shortsighted, self-serving and utterly arrogant.
Leila, thank you for your prayers (indeed).
Unfortunately, the Luther issue obscured the main points of my post. First, that the Hebrew did not liberate themselves. God liberated them. Same for Christians, at the spiritual level. Secondly, that the “love your neigbour as yourself” comes second to, and as a consequence of, the love of God. The ten commandments cannot be reduced to those in the second table.
Some may object that Jesus’ reply, when asked by a young man (Mt 19:16-18) “Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” only alluded to the commandments that concerned love of neighbor. That was because, from his desire to have eternal life, it was logical to assume that he already kept the commandments concerning love of God.
Enrique-who says you are right? Maybe YOU are the arrogant one? Why should anyone be forced to have the values you have?
Cde Bin-Laden, er, Ben-David, us pork-munchers are not bound by ANYTHING in the Torah.
It is, rather, the Torah which happens to contain some genuinely useful advice on how to live in the world, in addition to rubbish about eating odd food, dressing funny, and believing in mythical deities.
MFB-
Since this is Tony’s site, let me ask you a question about Apartheid-why should you think Tony’s position is “the moral one” and that Verwoerd’s isn’t?
I guess YBD just revealed his ideological underwear…
Tony-
If you are claiming that I am saying that Apartheid was good, that is totally false. What I am saying is that if you don’t believe in Divine Revelation, why should it be bad? Verwoerd’s support for it is his personal preference and Tony’s opposition to it is HIS personal preference, NOTHING MORE. Morals reduce to nothing more than what each person feels comfortable with.
Ho hum… Now you’re sounding like the Pope…
Though I’m not the Pope, I’d like to point out that there is some difference between YBD’s last post and the Catholic viewpoint. We affirm the existence of a natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, which is universal in its precepts and whose authority extends to all men.
But due to the fact that, as a consequence of original sin, human nature became weakened and inclined to evil (though not totally corrupted), the precepts of natural law are not perceived by everyone clearly and immediately, Therefore, in the present situation man needs revelation so moral and religious truths may be known by everyone with facility, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error.
Quoting St Augustine (the Pope’s favorite theologian, BTW) “God wrote on the tables of the Law what men did not read in their hearts.”
Tony, although I, as a Jew, have difficulties with a lot of the history of the Catholic Church, your comment reminds me of Stalin’s classic comment “How many divisions does the pope have?”. I can now ask today “how many divisions do the ‘progressive’ Communists have today?”. Do you have anything serious to say in response to what I wrote? WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOU AND VERWOERD?
It’s hard to take most of what you write seriously. The difference between me and Verwoerd? I can think of many. One is that he believed in Divine Revelation; I don’t.
Tony-as you yourself pointed out, Verwoerd distorted the message of the Bible.
I meant to add in the previous posting that also among those who believed in Divine Revelation was Wilberforce, the Abolitionists and Martin Luther King, and they carried out their battle against slavery and discrimination in its name. Everyone today says that it is THEIR view of Divine Revelation that is the correct one, not Verwoerd’s.
That other fellow who claimed to fight against human bondage, Karl Marx, who was an atheist ,had slavery REINTRODUCED in the USSR in his name, and it was huge slave gangs, operating in the name of atheism that built the Moscow Metro, the White Sea Canal, the Kolyma gold mines and the rest of the GULAG, again all in the name of Marx and atheism.
Like you said, I struggle take these meanderings of yours seriously. But you seem to be doing just fine in that peculiar conversation you’re having with your self about Marx, Verwoerd and a cast of thousands… Carry on, don’t mind me…
“If Hillel was right (and I believe he was) that Judaism is less about rituals and the minutiae of halachic law than it is about the ethical treatment of others.”
Another reader beat to me to the punch on you misreading the aphorism, but I will provide my two cents (and another perspective).
Rather than diminishing the importance of halachah, Hillel was articulating the defining principle of Jewish law and practice. If you look at the disputes between the schools of Shammai and Hillel, you will see that their debates center around what constituted the optimal approach to fulfilling the mitzvot. Hillel tended toward leniency (but not abstraction as Paul later interpreted Jesus’ teaching) since he believed that rigor should not let Jews lose sight of the purpose of the ritual. The mitzvot were a means of ‘conscientizing’ (as we used to say in Nusas circles) Jews to a moral way of life. (Hillel, by the way, denied the notion of a messiah, which may be of interest to some of your other readers). Shammai instead emphasized going beyond the letter of the law, since the purpose of Jewish existence was to do God’s will, as outlined in the Torah. Shirking the rigors of halachah was a slippery slope that would ultimately result in losing sight of God’s will and the abandonment of the Jewish way of life. The Talmud generally rules in favor of the school of Hillel, but Shammai’s position has clearly endured over the generations (ie it’s alive and well in Borough Park).
I think too there is a danger of losing sight of the religious significance and letting the historical narrative of freedom from oppression dominate. One element of Pesach is commemorating the freedom from slavery; the other is not eating chametz, whole grains apart from matzah. The stock explanation is that we eat matzah because the dough didn’t have time to rise, but more than that it represents a mentality, one connected to the discontinuity between physical freedom and the slave mentality. In the Kabbalah, matzah has become to be symbolic of the absence of religious or spiritual awareness, or though in some sense it is also perceived as the latent potential of the human soul.
Slavery in this sense is an attachment to materiality, oppression is being bound to linearity. You might recall that there are several incidents in the forty years of wandering where the Jews hanker for the ‘fleshpots’ of Egypt and fondly recall Egyptian cuisine. And of course while Moses is on the mountain, Aaron is complicit in the building of the ‘golden calf’. Freedom has to have dimensionality. We eat matzah to remind ourselves that freedom is not necessarily the absence of slavery. It is the first step in the process. Just as the words of the Hatikvah tell us of the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists to be an “am chofshi”, a free nation, political sovereignty is the first step in creating a Jewish state – not a state of Jews.
Does this bear any relationship to the bankrupt ideology of our seder tables in South Africa? No, no and no.
Tony:
Your postings remind me of a joke told about the founder of the Reconstructionist Movement in the United States, who, 100 years had ideas similar to yours, i.e. that science had supposedly “proved” that Biblical history is fabricated and Jewish theology was “obsolete”. The joke is:
Mordechai Kaplan believes the Jews are a divinely chosen people whose sacred mission to mankind is to prove that there is no deity and that the Jews are no different than everyone else.
aaron silverstein is right we jews should build a man made island …..and make it a new israel.
R. Stanley-
How is that idea any different than the others like building a Jewish state in Uganda (actually Kenya) or Patagonia? They were all non-starters, too.
Ben David,
I am an Orthodox Jew. I learned the Alef Beit the same time as the alphabet, and I’m coming off fifteen years of Judaic education. The Torah has actually been quite clear on this:
“All men were created in God’s image.”
“And you should remember the slave, because you too were once slaves in a strange land.”
Oh, and guess what? After Abraham sealed his covenant with God, he didn’t start throwing rocks at Cana’nites. He didn’t build a wall to keep them out, not even when he was weak and vulnerable. His first action was to provide them comfort and shelter.
Compare this with Israel’s current starvation policies in Gaza. God does not smile on the suffering of Palestinians.
Maybe Tony’s Judaism is a bit too universalistic for our tastes, but your comment is downright bizarre: “Tony, in his ongoing attempt to claim that there is a new form of Judaism which he claims is “unversalistic””
It’s fascinating that so many religious folks seem bent on creating a Judaism that is hyperparticularist, unlike the original Judaism I just described, which came straight from God’s mouth. With this you risk creating a false duality between religiosity and charity, between “Mitzvot ben adam lemakom” and “Mitzvot ben adam lakhavero”, and actually driving people away from God because of love for their fellow man. Surely this is not your intent! So, I would like to hear from you what you consider a Jew’s responsibility to mankind. I’m sure Tony would as well.
Hope you enjoyed your Passover.