|
Jewish World Review Dec. 27, 1999 /18 Teves, 5760
OUR DIMINSHED sense of G-d's presence
in the external world forces us to discover Him
through the echo, or image, of Him within ourselves.
Imagine someone observing a house in which all the blinds
were drawn.
Any conclusions concerning what is taking place inside,
based solely on the comings and goings of the inhabitants,
are sure to be wide of the mark.
Yet most Jews today are consigned to precisely such
outsider status with respect to Torah Judaism.
Those who attempt to communicate an understanding of
Judaism to fellow Jews find themselves confronted from the
outset by a lack of shared experience and common spiritual
vocabulary.
In no area is that absence more keenly felt than when one
attempts to provide some taste of the richness of Jewish
thought to those who have little previous exposure and who
lack the linguistic skills to study original texts. Talk about
the depth of Torah thought, and the response is likely to be
"Deep? You mean like the Grateful Dead?"
Over the past decade, however, there has developed a
body of Torah works that are both thoroughly grounded in
the greatest modern Jewish thinkers -- for example, Rabbi
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, the Maharal of Prague, and the
Vilna Gaon -- and written in a modern idiom. Not since the
days of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in 19th-century
Germany has the general Jewish public had access to so
many works in the vernacular that are both faithful to Torah
tradition and startlingly original in exposition and style.
Many, though by no means all, of those works have been
produced by ba'alei teshuvah, who combine secular
academic backgrounds with a decade or more of in-depth
Torah study. (The creation of this literature is but one
example of the profound impact of ba'alei teshuvah on the
Torah world over the lpast quarter of a century.)
These "returnees" to Torah observance have proven
uniquely qualified to spread Torah in our time. Their own
religious faith was of necessity achieved only after profound
intellectual struggle, for they grew to maturity in a world
whose underlying assumptions are profoundly hostile to
religious faith and practice. They have had to confront all
the big questions and challenges themselves, and have thus
proven uniquely suited to guiding others. The former
chairman of the philosophy department at one of America's
most prominent universities once told me that he is almost
never asked a question about Torah with which he had not
previously grappled himself.
Akiva Tatz's Worldmask and Jeremy Kagan's The
Jewish Self are two outstanding examples of the body of
literature being described. Rabbi Tatz was a top South
African medical student in his day; Rabbi Kagan a
Yale-trained philosopher. They both deal, in very different
ways, with the issue of faith in a world in which G-d's
presence is hidden.
To help others gain access to that faith, Kagan embarks on
nothing less than a history of self-awareness. In his account,
all societies, until roughly the time of Alexander the Great,
were worshipping societies, in which men experienced their
existence as an expression of G-d's will and located the
root of their being in the realm of Spirit.
Modern man, by contrast, denies reality to all that is not
subject to sensory observation, leading to a constricted
sense of both the external world and self.
That transformation in the nature of self-awareness, Kagan
argues, reflects a change in our objective historical situation
and the way G-d manifests Himself in the world. We no
longer live in a world of prophecy and open miracles, in
which worship is experienced as a natural act.
By demonstrating that modern man's lack of faith is "a
necessary consequence of our historical placement and
cultural experience," Kagan seeks to again open modern
man to the possibility of faith.
One of his signal achievements is to show the role of G-d's
hiddenness in the Divine plan. Just as the mother must, to
some extent, sever the bond of intimacy with her infant if he
is to mature, so too must G-d do this with us. Before we
can truly enter a relationship with G-d, we must first
become independent individuals, capable of freely choosing
that relationship. Too overwhelming an awareness of His
presence nullifies our independence.
The end of prophecy and open miracles, then, allows the
attainment of true selfhood, and the development of that
selfhood permits a transition from self-effacing Fear of G-d
to self-creating Love of G-d. Our ancestors in the desert
experienced faith; for us, it is the result of a positive act.
Our diminished sense of G-d's presence in the external
world forces us to discover Him through the echo, or
image, of Him within ourselves. We are in the same position
as our forefather Avraham, who, our Sages tell us, saw a
world of death and decline - "a burning castle." But when
he looked within himself, he found something meaningful
and infinite. He "learned Torah from himself," in the words
of the Sages. At that moment, he discovered both his true
self and G-d.
Torah is the conduit through which we form our deepest
relationship with G-d. And as the nature of that relationship
changed, so too the nature of Torah. From the period of the
Written Torah, which is prophetic and comes from a source
outside ourselves, we have moved into a period in which
the Oral Torah dominates. The latter depends on the nature
of the recipient and his own active participation.
Oral Torah demands of us the discovery of self. It is
available only to one who "kills" himself in its pursuit. Killing
oneself involves not the end of individuality, but its
discovery through the destruction of all external drives
foreign to one's elemental self. In the process, one's
essential unity, derived from the unity of the Creator
Himself, is laid bare.
The Oral Torah is even dearer to G-d than the Written
Torah, for it is dependent on the our active participation. In
the words of Song of Songs, "Your love [the words of the
Sages] is dearer than wine [the Written Torah]." The latter
is a stimulant to Love, the former Love
Love sweeter than wine
By Jonathan Rosenblum
JWR contributor Jonathan Rosenblum is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post. He can be reached by clicking here.
11/23/99: When lives are at stake, where's Israel?
11/17/99: The Mortara Affair Revisited
11/08/99: Do religious Jews make lousy parents?
10/28/99: Heed the heart
10/14/99: Tell me you love me --- please!
09/27/99: True Jewish rejoicing
08/09/99: Many Ways to be a Jew
07/15/99: Abolish the Three Weeks?
07/08/99: Memories of Entebbe
05/17/99: The Leadership We Deserve
05/10/99: Still a Hero
03/18/99: Israel’s "Little Rock Central High"?
02/19/99: Why Israel's fervently-Orthodox are mad-as-....
02/04/99:Those ornery Orthodox: Myth and Reality
02/01/99: Keep the money